MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th May, 2023) The United States has topped the list of countries financing foreign agents' activities in Russia, with nearly 270 million rubles ($3.38 million) spent for this purpose in 2022, Vasily Piskarev, the head of the Russian lower house's commission on the investigation of foreign interference, said on Friday.
"At the end of last year, the United States topped the list of countries financing the activities of foreign agents in our country. In 2022, the United States allocated about 270 million rubles for this purpose. Compare this with the amounts received by foreign agents a year earlier, that is 60 million rubles. And these are only officially tracked amounts, while real ones are much higher," Piskarev told reporters.
He also pointed out that the United States had announced in March that it would spend about $9.5 billion in 2022-2024 to "support democracy globally," while Washington-based non-profit organization Freedom House published a report sponsored by the US Agency for International Development that alleged the largest drop in Russia's democracy rating in the last 30 years.
Meanwhile, Ukraine was listed in the document as a vivid example of developed democracies, in which the relevant indicators were growing. The authors of the report admitted that they had based their conclusions on information supplied by foreign agents, the Russian lawmaker added.
A foreign agent in Russia is a person or an entity deemed by the Russian government to receive funding from abroad while participating in political activities in the country, disseminating information in mass media, or collecting military-technical information within the borders of Russia. The state imposes a number of restrictions and requirements on the activities of foreign agents.
