The West will try to destabilize the situation in Russia before voting on amendments to the Constitution, as well as before a voting day in autumn, Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev said "Argumenty i Fakty".
"In anticipation of these political events, it is expected to intensify their work through the available opportunities, including in the Russian regions with the help of non-profit non-governmental organizations, where they intend to provoke nationalist and separatist sentiments," he explained.
According to the secretary, "additional emphasis is also expected to be placed on encouraging the activity of so-called alternative union organizations.
In addition, according to Paturshev, the West plans to increase information pressure on Russia "in order to blur the Russian spiritual, moral and cultural-historical values that form the foundation of statehood, and to reduce the sense of all-Russian identity of our citizens.
"The main tasks are to bring a split into Russian society, to impose values and models of development beneficial to them, to get an opportunity to manipulate the public consciousness," he noted.
One of the coordinators of the West's destructive activities, according to the source, is the State Department, as well as the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, the leading U.S. non-governmental organizations - the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Institute of Modern Russia, the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation) and several others.
According to Patrushev, "a number of non-governmental and international organizations based primarily in the United States and Western European countries are also widely used by Americans and their NATO partners to work in Russia.
The most important role for the West in terms of organizing direct contacts with those forces inside Russia that can help destabilize the situation is played by the Baltic States, Patrushev also said.
"High activity" is shown, in particular, by Lithuania, which regularly hosts the so-called Forum of Free Russia, where new forms of civil protest and scenarios of increased external pressure on the Russian leadership are discussed. And in Latvia, "independent" Russian journalists are trained by specialists of the Baltic Media Development Centre, he said.
"The West unites and supports financially non-systemic opposition and pro-Western-oriented Russian public associations and selects candidates for the role of protest movement leaders committed to "democratic values and ideals of freedom," he said.
Non-profit organizations involved in political activities, as noted by the Secretary, officially received about four billion rubles from Western sponsors in 2015-2019. "However, in reality, these amounts are much higher, as Western sponsors use various hidden funding schemes, in particular, the transfer through network intermediary organizations, which seriously complicates the evidence of direct involvement of the U.S. or its allies in subversive activities against Russia," he said.
At the same time, according to Patrushev, the anti-Russian activities of a number of foreign NGOs have been localized. In addition, control over the receipt of financial and other assistance from abroad to the Russian opposition and pro-Western NGOs has been strengthened.
The all-Russian vote on constitutional amendments was scheduled for April 22, but then postponed due to the difficult epidemiological situation in the country. Later, President Vladimir Putin announced that it would be held on 1 July.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: official website of the President of the Russian Federation
Based on materials from RIA Novosti