November 8: Fund of presidential grants in the discussions of the forum "Community" ("Soobschestvo"). Source: Fund of presidential grants / Vkontakte.The Kremlin recently announced the winners of the second Presidential Grant awards competition for 2017. According to the organisers, they had received more applications than ever before, and the overall sum allocated (4.5 billion roubles) was also the highest. In fact, the sum was double than that of the previous contest this past spring.
This NGO support programme was erroneously named (“presidential grants”) from the start. It is, needless to say, not funded out of Putin’s own pocket or some presidential foundation, but from the public purse. It only bears that name because the instruction to allocate the necessary cash is signed by Vladimir Putin. The name has stuck, making the Russian president the country’s chief philanthropist. In April 2017 this error was officially enshrined in the name of the new body responsible for state funding — The Presidential Grant Foundation for the Development of Civil Society (PGF). Grant winners are selected by Russia’s Presidential Administration.
The grant programme was created in 2006: the mid-2000s were the highpoint of the then First Deputy Chief of the Russian Presidential Administration Vladislav Surkov’s “sovereign democracy”. Russia’s updated Foreign Agent law did not exist yet, but the state controlled media were already actively trying to discredit human rights and environmental NGOs. The main premise of their smear campaign, which reflected Russia’s rulers’ perception of these organisations’ work, was already in place: if Russian NGOs receive funding from the west, that means they work for the west.
