MOSCOW — Russia has ordered the United States to end its financial support for a wide-range of pro-democracy groups, human rights organizations and other civil society programs, in an aggressive step by the Kremlin to halt what it has come to view as thinly veiled American meddling in the country's internal affairs, and backing for some opponents of President Vladimir V. Putin.
The Kremlin's provocative decision to end two-decades of work in post-Soviet Russia by the United States Agency for International Development was announced on Tuesday by the State Department in Washington. It will cut off aid that currently totals about $50 million a year.
The Russian government has taken a number of actions in recent months to bring pressure on nongovernmental groups and clamp down on political dissent, including a new law requiring any organization receiving aid from abroad to register with the justice minister as "acting as a foreign agent." Russia also hiked the penalties for libel and slander, a move that seemed intended to intimidate critics of government officials.
The aid money from Washington supports a panorama of organizations and advocacy efforts, including Golos, Russia's only independent election monitoring group, which played in an important role in exposing fraud in parliamentary elections last December.
Those disputed elections led to a series of large anti-government protests, which continued through Mr. Putin's election in May to a third term as president. The most recent protest, just this Saturday, drew tens of thousands of people on the streets of central Moscow.
While the Kremlin demanded that the aid programs cease by Oct. 1, Obama administration officials said that they had appealed to the Russian Foreign Ministry for a more gradual phase-out. The programs had been authorized through a bilateral agreement that expired in September 2010. While little progress had been made on a new accord, Russia's decision to cancel the programs caught Washington by surprise.
In Washington the administration said the United States would continue to promote democracy in Russia, and officials expressed pride in past efforts.
"While USAID's physical presence in Russia will come to an end, we remain committed to supporting democracy, human rights, and the development of a more robust civil society in Russia and look forward to continuing our cooperation with Russian non-governmental organizations," the State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said in a statement.
But as a practical matter it was unclear how many of the programs could continue without financing or support staff on the ground.
American officials said they were trying to strike a balance between vowing to continue their effort, which risks angering the Russians, and negotiating diplomatically to achieve a more gradual phase-out of existing programs.
Officials said that the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, informed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of the decision when they meet in Vladivostok in the Russian Far East earlier this month during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting. Formal notice was then sent to Washington by Moscow on Sept. 11, officials said.
The American-financed programs played a crucial role in helping Russia recover from the collapse of the Soviet Union, and included efforts to build the country's capital markets and financial system and its mortgage-lending industry. The United States also supported an array of health programs, including efforts to combat tuberculosis and the spread of H.I.V.
But in recent years Russia has bridled at the foreign aid flowing across its borders, in part because it views itself as a world power, a member of the Group of 8, and therefore more appropriately positioned to dole out assistance than to receive it.
The Kremlin has also expressed increasing impatience with what it views as American support for political opponents of Mr. Putin, and as meddling in Russia's internal affairs.
"They have been very clear that they are not happy with our work with Transparency International or Golos, or other groups related to those types of activities," said one American official who was not authorized to publicly discuss the diplomatic issues. "They have made that clear directly with those groups as well."
By STEVEN LEE MYERS 19 Sep, 2012
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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/world/europe/russia-demands-us-end-pro-democracy-work.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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