MOSCOW, January 23, 6:35 /ITAR-TASS/. A Ukrainian lawmaker claims that the country’s opposition is sponsored from foreign source, at least partially.
“Ukrainian businessmen, especially in the country’s western regions, offer material support to the protesters,” Oleg Tsarev of the ruling Party of Regions said in an interview with Russia’s Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily on Thursday. “But these are one-time investments. In the majority of cases they, so to say, pay in kind, i.e. provide foods, fuels, firewood, clothing.”
“But all this, even the patronage of some of our tycoons cannot explain the tenacity of protest phenomena,” he said.
He noted that leaders of the “guys who call themselves off-politics activists and who called on their supporters to march to the Grishevsky Street [where the government building is located] last Sunday,” had met with British Ambassador Simon Smith and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt a day before that. “According to information, which is now being verified, after these meetings about one million U.S. dollars were credited to the accounts controlled by some activists. And riots began on the next day. Obviously, there is a link between these events,” he said.
Tsarev also said he had information that many Ukrainian media were financed by foreign grants. Such media, in his words, include the Ukrainskaya Pravda news portal, the most popular news site in Ukraine, “the stronghold of Ukrainian independence and the bastion of ‘revolution.’” “They are sponsored directly from the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington. Notably, it was not they who disclosed the source, but the Americans in their reporting.” According to Tsarev, “all their publication new are direct calls for an upheaval.”
Another example is the Internews-Ukraine public organization. “Their sponsor is the United States Agency for International Development (USAID),” he noted. “They have already spent on Internews-Ukraine as many as 14 million U.S. dollars. This money was used to create more than 270 television and 1,220 radio programmes and “give journalist classes” to about 4,000 people. Now, their students are trying to convince Ukrainian that what is happening in Kiev is right and praising the rioters.”
“And what is most important is the fact that the U.S. Department of State and European Union officials in Brussels are unwilling to let Ukraine alone after it refused to sign the ruinous association agreement,” the Ukrainian lawmaker said. “They have activated another, radical scenario. Regrettably, they have managed to train a strong ‘fifth column’ inside the country, which frustrates any attempts to impose order. And they are not going to loosen their grip.