Those who got US funding should seek penance on Red Square, Duma speaker

The outspoken parliament speaker on Tuesday called on the US Congress to provide lists with names of Russians who have received money from USAID. 

The names should be given to the FSB, Vyacheslav Volodin said according to a news release posted on the State Duma's portal.

Activists, journalists and politicians living in exile are among those Volodin wants to come home to confess they have received funding from the United States. 

"The relocates [Russians living in exile] left and hoped that USAID would continue to finance them there, abroad, and now they will be left hungry and cold," Volodin said after it became known that the new Trump administration wants to bring USAID to an end.

They should "publicly confess and repent on Red Square," Volodin said to state controlled agency RIA Novosti. 

USAID has in recent years provided grants to several media, including Russian newsrooms working in exile in Europe. Press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) told the Guardian that the US agency in 2023 gave funding for training of 6,200 journalists and supported more than 700 independent news outlets in more than 30 countries. 

Ironically, Vyacheslav Volodin's own party, the pro-Putin United Russia, is also on the list of receivers of US money. The news came in 2012, the same year as Moscow announced the termination of USAID activities in Russia. United Russia participated in some programs by the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said according to Russian news outlet RBC. 

USAID worked in Russia from 1992 to 2012. Its funding helped hundreds of civil society groups, many of which later were branded as "foreign agents" and were forced to shut down. 

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PS. The Barents Observer has never received funding from any USAID programs.