About grants and grantees

In recent days, at the suggestion of citizen V.V. Putin. The topic of grants and grant recipients has become fashionable.

“Grantee” is such a dirty word now.

Meanwhile, the majority of foreign grants (I think 99 percent) are aimed at supporting our science and culture. Without them, many of our scientists and artists would not be able to work. There are, of course, grants for the development of institutions of a democratic society. I don't see anything wrong with this. Putin, of course, may believe that our institutions of a democratic society are already well developed, but not everyone shares this point of view.

But this is not the main thing. For some reason, no one remembers that one of the largest distributors of grants in our country is the presidential administration. For this purpose, a whole system has been created, which includes, as a distraction, the Public Chamber and a certain public fund “Resistance”, which distributes the money further.

In March of this year, for example, we read in the news:

President Dmitry Medvedev signed an order to provide 1 billion rubles to non-profit, non-governmental organizations involved in the development of civil society institutions, the Kremlin press service reports. The recipients of grants were the same five organizations as last year... The Presidential Administration was instructed to conclude agreements with NGOs on providing them with subsidies by April 15, 2011 and transfer the money by September 12... Interregional human rights public organization "Resistance", headed by Olga Kostina, will receive 160 million rubles for the protection of human rights and freedoms and legal education of the population... A competition for the distribution of grants to NGOs was announced by the Public Chamber of Russia.

Olga Nikolaevna Kostina is herself a member of the Public Chamber of Russia, previously a member of the Advisory Council of the FSB of the Russian Federation. Currently, Olga Kostina is a member of the Commission for Work with Public Organizations under the Presidium of the General Council of United Russia. But the main thing: Olga Kostina is the wife of the head of the internal policy department of the Presidential Administration, Konstantin Kostin, the right hand and reliable assistant of V.Yu. Surkov. The same Konstantin Kostin who participated in compiling lists of which non-profit organizations to give grants to. That is, the husband gave the president a document to sign about how much money to transfer to his wife.

This is the cycle of grants in one family.

We recently found out which public organizations are patronized by the “human rights foundation” “Resistance”, which manages Kremlin money. For example, for such a grant there is the notorious Ozone center, about whose expert Leila Sokolova we recently learned a lot of interesting things. What a human rights activist Leila Sokolova is. But he’s also a grant recipient, it turns out.

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