Duma speaker urges Russians who took US funding to ‘repent on Red Square’

The speaker of Russia’s State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin has suggested that Russian politicians, activists and journalists in exile who have been recipients of grants from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) should “publicly confess and repent on Red Square”, RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday.

Addressing a parliamentary session on Tuesday, Volodin accused Russians who chose to go into exile of leaving the country “in the hope that USAID would finance them abroad”, adding that US President Donald Trump’s order last month to freeze all foreign aid payments for 90 days would “leave them hungry, hoping that someone will give them something again”.

“But no one will give them anything, that’s for sure,” Volodin said, adding that the Russian government should request that Congress share a list of Russian citizens who received US funding with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).

The Trump administration has moved in recent weeks to dismantle USAID, Washington’s key foreign aid agency, and is reportedly planning to retain fewer than 300 of the agency’s 10,000 staff worldwide, Reuters reported last week. On Friday, CNN reported that thousands of USAID employees had already been placed on administrative leave.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warned on Tuesday that the foreign aid freeze would lead to a decline in the number of independent media organisations around the world, many of which have relied on USAID grants to continue their work. In 2023, the agency funded the training of at least 6,200 journalists and provided grants to over 700 independent media outlets worldwide.

Kremlin propagandists have seized upon the dismantling of USAID gleefully, with Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova saying on Thursday that the agency had “directly sponsored” mass protests and “coups” in post-Soviet states, including in Ukraine and Georgia, and accused US taxpayers of paying “out of their own pockets for the destruction of Ukrainian statehood”.