Russia puts $300 million to impact world politics – State Department
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Russia has secretly spent more than $300 million since 2014 in an effort to influence politicians and other officials in more than 20 countries, said CBS news, citing a cable released by the US State Department on Tuesday.
The cable cited a new intelligence assessment of Russia’s global scheme to support policies and parties sympathetic to Moscow.
The cable did not name any state but said the US is providing classified information to select individual countries.
CBS cited a senior official in the Biden administration as saying that Russia meddled in “recent elections in Albania, Bosnia and Montenegro, all Eastern European countries that have faced historical pressure from Moscow.”
Putin was spending huge sums “in an attempt to manipulate democracies from the inside,” the official told a CBS reporter.
Contrary to foreign governments who lobby for preferred goals, Russia uses front organizations to funnel money to preferred issues or politicians, the cable claimed. “That includes think tanks in Europe and state-owned enterprises in Central America, Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa.”
To counter the Russian efforts, the US State Department sent the cable on Monday to many US embassies and consulates abroad, laying out the concerns. The cable urged US diplomats to recommend their host governments to impose sanctions, travel bans, and exposure of covert financing.
According to intelligence officials cited in the cable, this is just part of Russia’s scheme as it plans to funnel at least hundreds of millions more dollars in funding to close parties and officials around the world.