The guest of the program 'Tribune', the Senator of the Republic of Chuvashia, the chairman of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs, Konstantin Kosachev, has discussed the international agenda with Vladimir Nesterov
- Are foreign NGOs active in our country? It is no secret that they are mainly financed by Western countries, including the US.
- The story is not only about our country. It is global. Of course the Americans are pioneers, even though some of their allies have been intensively following their example in recent times. The story is 30, 40, 50 years old; it started during the Cold War. The US realized that by hiding behind values and the format of non-governmental organizations they could also fulfill the goals of their national policy effectively. And they began to multiply the experience, when formally organizations were created without the involvement or financial support of the government. Formally, they were created “for everything good and against everything bad.” And they fulfilled some really wonderful projects which could be demonstrated as confirmation that this or that organization was indeed innocent. However, at the same time – sometimes it was more obvious, sometimes it was done indirectly – they fulfilled projects which were connected with imposing views on civil society, with the formation of protest attitudes and destabilization of situations where it met the US needs.
The scenarios are clear. In countries which had a strong multi-party system and political mechanisms, they could support a loyal political party and help it to reach power legally. By the way, this happened in the majority of countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the 1980-1990s. In countries where the political system was underdeveloped, or those loyal to the American side were too small or marginal, they fulfilled a different scenario – the mobilization of civil society, taking people to the streets, and forced overthrows not through political mechanisms, but through rioting. There were many such examples before the Maidan in countries of Central and Eastern Europe, where they failed to fulfill goals politically, and in the countries of the post-Soviet space. It was a defeat for all of these countries, their national interests, independence, and the main principle of democracy – the right of peoples to define their own fate.
Some countries reacted to this quickly, others – slowly. As far as I remember, Russia started to deal with the problem a few years ago. During the last 5-6 years, we have been steadily improving Russian legislation to introduce new rules of the game at least at the legal level. Nobody is banning NGOs in Russia, neither domestic nor foreign ones, if they openly state their activities. There is the term “foreign agent”, it is taken from American legislation. But there is no situation where a Russian non-governmental organization which gets foreign grants to work would be banned for this. The only thing which is demanded is an open statement that he is working with foreign sources of financing; so that the people who cooperate with it see a partner in it, know where it gets its resources.
About a month ago the law on undesired organizations began operating. However, it doesn't touch on Russian, but on international or national NGOs which can be included on the list of undesirable organizations under certain conditions. The procedure is quite clear; a decision is made by the General Prosecution with the consent of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The list of organizations is open. It is being made by the Ministry of Justice.
However, it resembles a competition between armor and a shell – the clearer the rules of the game are, the greater the desire to break the rules is by those who are working under cover of the so-called nongovernmental organizations in favor of the national interests of not the country where they are working, but the country where they have come from. This is a multioptional situation. They are building networks, creating organizations which formally don’t work on the territory of another state, i.e. Russia. There are dozens of mediators between a grant and a Russian NGO which works for the money; but the goal of such organizations never changes – it is always political. Their activity means interference in our domestic affairs through financing, through the activities of structures which operate abroad.
That’s why the idea of “the patriotic stop-list” has appeared as a security mechanism. It is not forbidding, restricting, but a security mechanism for Russian NGOs which are always in the situation of a grey zone, when one doesn’t know whether he should take money or not, cooperate or not.
- How did the idea of the patriotic stop-list emerge?
- It was born by a huge number of questions which the Federation Council received from the regions. There is a nice NGO; it deals with human rights or planting trees or something else. And it receives an offer of financial support from a foreign partner. The organization has nothing in common with politics – people deal with their local problems at the level of civil society. And the organization wants to have full information to make a decision on whether they should join a project or not, cooperate with the partner or not.
Federation Council doesn't have the functions to respond to these questions. Is the Soros Fund good or bad? Is the McArthur Fund good or bad? However, we also have some questions for the organizations. We have our own view on the activitiea of these organizations in third countries, for example, in Ukraine. It is enough to look through the whole history of the matter: who was where, in the Maidan, who gave cookies to whom. We have more information than Russian NGOs do.
At the same time, we are only a ring in the chain of decision making. The final competence belongs to certain structures – the General Prosecution Service and many other organizations.
The idea of the patriotic stop-list requires that questions be asked to the most biased structures. We don’t know what answer they will give. 12 organizations were included on the patriotic stop-list, which was supported by the Federation Council. At first there were many more of them – more than 60. However, we followed the principle “to do no harm.” We understand clearly that we should act when the quantity turns into quality. That’s why we made the stop-list shortest. We included only the organizations to which we have an enormous number of questions. We hope that it will be a signal for these organizations as well: “Dear colleagues! Look at what you are doing and at Russian laws. Either you prove to the responsible bodies that questions to you are groundless, that you are doing what you declare to do, or you have no arguments. Then, you get onto the list of undesired organizations, and responsible structures will make certain decisions on you.”
However, this is a matter for the future. At the moment our signal is directed at Russian civil society: please, be careful with these structures. The patriotic stop-list is a kind of non-juridical, but still a certification of the NGOs which haven’t got onto the list.
Of course the patriotic stop-list is an available, open document, and it will develop. It is a live work. We should stop being a country where everything goes. We saw where it led to in Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, where it could lead in Armenia recently. We shouldn’t allow it to happen in Russia. In Russia, all problems and decisions should be regulated by our will and the activities of governmental, non-governmental, social, various, but only Russian organizations. This is the only principle.
- The patriotic stop-list is a public document. It can be a warning to our partners in the former Soviet Union, where there is a risk of internal political troubles from the activities of foreign countries, working with their opposition.
- Someone is now trying to pretend that Russia was the first and only country which agreed to such legislative restrictions related to the activities of public organizations and NGOs. That's not true. If you look at US legislation, at the laws of most European countries, so how can, for example, a Russian NGO, which deals with political or close to political activity, create and implement its work? Nonsense! It's impossible!
I've had the honor to lead the federal agency Rossotrudnichestvo for three years. It's q humanitarian cooperation agency, an agency for cooperation with compatriots, there is no politics at all there. Only culture and education. Rossotrudnichestvo operates in more than 80 countries worldwide, including the US, Germany, France, Spain, India, China. The three Baltic states have officially (reports of the security services were published) declared that Rossotrudnichestvo is an unwanted organization in their countries. We weren't allowed to open a Russian Center of Science and Culture in the capitals of this countries, which operate around the world, which have never had any politics, those which ensure the spiritual, cultural, and humanitarian needs of our compatriots and everyone interested in Russia and its culture, its history, its education, its science. The three states officially said: "We think that they should not work here!". And no one had any questions. All three Baltic states are members of the European Union and NATO. No one in the EU or NATO raised the question of why we have a Russian Center of Science and Culture, for example, in Germany, but it is prohibited in Tallinn or Riga. No one had dared to raise any questions, though this decision is absolutely offensive, in my opinion.
There are many examples. This is an unseemly, unfair policy towards our country.
- Konstantin Iosifovich, let's discuss the SCO and BRICS summits recently held in Ufa. What are their results? In my opinion, the coverage of these summits in the media was not as wide as the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.
- It's just the law of the genre probably. Media always respond to conflict situations more actively than to regular and stable situations. The BRICS and the SCO summits weren't overlooked by Russian media. The US and the EU media discussed it less. But it was really an extraordinary event for all the states which participated in the summits, and it has very far-reaching consequences. For the first time in many years Russia, together with our partners in these organizations, doesn't only react in a mode of negation to the actions of our geopolitical rivals. If we will remember the 1990s or even the 2000s, our integration policy was to ensure that NATO should not expand, the European Union should not be enlarged, and we will hold on to the CIS, because we did not have anything else. But this is not enough. For the last 10-15 years, real, attractive and able-bodied alternatives have appeared – the Union State, the CSTO, EurAsEC, the Eurasian Union, the BRICS, the SCO. These are tremendously exciting and capable associations. And this is not our assessment. This is confirmed by the interest in the activities of these structures, by the participation of dozens of countries in the work. And in the case of the SCO and the BRICS there are already concrete decisions in the economic sphere and in the sphere of security. I mean the anti-terrorist structure of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The most important thing that happened in Ufa is confirmation that the world is not focused on the Americans and NATO, it is multipolar, multivariate, there are other solutions to the economy in addition to the IMF and the World Bank, and the European Commission, and there are other solutions in politics, and there are other solutions in the humanitarian sphere.
We are trying here to reproduce the bipolar model of the Cold War – they have NATO and we have some kind of organization. But one will always try to attribute it to these integration projects in order to discredit them. These projects are not created as a counterweight. They are just our contribution to the creation of a future model of the world, relying on many formats, many structures and many centers of power. In this sense, the summit in Ufa was a complete success.
- A few years ago they started saying that Russia is reopening Latin America for itself. We remember the transatlantic campaign of our warships which went to Cuba, Venezuela, the mutual visits, some revival of foreign economic relations. The recent news coming from Latin America indicates that the US is reopening Latin America and Cuba for itself. What do we have now? How far are the relationships open today?
- The Americans tried to strangle Cuba. The Americans also tried to strangle, maybe not so straightforwardly, but just as unceremoniously, quite a number of other states disloyal to them, regardless of what mode existed there, whatever form of government or level of democracy had been achieved. The fact that the Americans are changing their policy is nothing more than an acknowledgment that they failed in their previous attitude to Latin America. Thank God that this insight has come. The Cuban example shows the futility and hopelessness of sanctions in principle, and regarding the absolutely wonderful proud, self-sufficient and freedom-loving people of Cuba it was initially impossible, and it is strange that the Americans did not understand this.
Indeed, Russia is back in Latin America, Asia and Africa. Not because we want to compete with the Americans in all areas. We realize the multi-vector of practical policy, when our activity in the Asian direction does not mean damage to Europe, and our return to Latin America does not mean the continuation of ignoring Africa. We just become much more active, more effective in foreign policy. It is not permissible for Russia to be absent in any region of the world. And by presence I don't mean a demonstration of the flag and regular visits of our warships, but practical projects of cooperation, integration projects. If you look at the results of the negotiations of the Russian president, who has repeatedly been in Latin America in recent years, of the visits of our ministers (of industry, foreign affairs, economic development), we can see concrete results.
And no one has to be convinced. There was a fear that everyone would have forgotten about us after two decades of our absence in certain countries. But there is an opposite story. Firstly, we see the kindest feelings where Russia appears again, and secondly, we do not feel that there was any pause. We are told: "It is a pity that you weren't here for some time, but we gravitated toward you, and now we have gravitated, we are ready to cooperate and now we are ready, let's sit at the table and restore the lost connection as soon as possible." This is encouraging.
I do not think the Americans are welcomed in many countries. Somewhere they are welcomed, somewhere not. Russia, according to my feelings, Russia was almost never met in a hostile or wary way. And after all, it depends on us. If we come with specific interesting projects if these projects are mutually beneficial, then usually there are not any restrictions.
- Konstantin Iosifovich, in the context of the 'From Kamchatka Territory to the Kaliningrad Region' rubric we ask our guests about insights into the region they represent in the Federation Council. You represent the Republic of Chuvashia. Tell us what should tourists expect from this region?
- This is the real Russia. This is the Volga, nature, an amazing culture of surprising ethnic and historical diversity, and at the same time of surprising harmony. Chuvashia is a National Republic, the Chuvash people are the majority, 70%, but we have no trace of ethnic strife, tension or rivalry. I am sincerely happy for Chuvashia, when every time I see that this national identity, the knowledge of their roots is not a factor of discord or temporary closing-down in the past, but rather a factor of development, a factor of moving forward. The vast majority of the national republics in Russia can boast the same, and it's great because this is a hallmark of the Russian Federation – which is multinational, multi-ethnic and multi-confessional. We are a wonderful role model for countries which could not solve this kind of problem as efficiently and harmoniously as the Russian Federation has.
However, we have enough points of ethnic tensions in our country. Fortunately, Chuvashia is not one of such territories. This is an area of very interesting economic and social development, this is a bet on modern technology, this is the capital of the Russian electronics, instrumentation, tractor construction, the Cheboksary Tractor Factory, a huge chemical plant, there are very interesting decisions in the economic sphere, in the sphere of social policy. We have extended the gas network to every settlement, paved roads linking every settlement without exception. We have fitness centers in every district center. There are so many positions where the Chuvash Republic maintains its reputation and its standard is much higher than nationwide. The amount of new housing per capita is the second or third position in the Russian Federation. I can praise Chuvashia quite long, but I said once again, it's amazing nature, an amazing story, amazing people and remarkable achievements.
