Emails expose watchdog's dollar deal
Russian news website Life News has published emails it claims show correspondence between the US State Dept. and the Russian election watchdog Golos discussing payments for work done to discredit the results of Russia’s parliamentary vote. - Life News says it has come into the possession of 60 megabytes of Golos' private online correspondence. According to Life News, they are letters sent and received by Golos Executive Chief Lilya Shibanova and her deputy Grigory Melkonyants. Judging by the documents published on the site, the group which claimed to be independent was actually funded in order to defend the interests of US State Department. In one of the letters Yulia Kostkina, a financial analyst for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) sends Melkonyants a list of remarks and guidelines considering Golos' activities.
Russia Today: Medvedev: Protests a manifestation of democracy
Alex Lantier: US officials threaten Russia amid post-election protests - Amid deep popular disaffection and opposition protests against the regime of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin following Russia’s December 4 parliamentary elections, US officials are mounting a campaign to destabilize Russia. The elections, which were marked by numerous instances of vote fraud, saw Putin’s United Russia party officially receive only 49.5 percent of the vote, down 15 percent from 2007. This reflects broad and deeply-felt anger with the disastrous social conditions of post-Soviet Russia. In response, Washington has ratcheted up military and political tensions with the Kremlin, including by backing ongoing protests politically dominated by Russia’s official right-wing “opposition” parties. US officials are seeking to exploit the fact that protests are limited to relatively small layers of the urban middle class and dominated by the official “opposition,” to push Russian politics in a right-wing direction favorable to US imperialism.