The news of USAID’s abolition, despite the fervent opposition of those involved, is a geopolitical sensation. For decades, USAID was a backbone structure for “soft power,” operating in more than 100 countries around the world. USAID has a budget of over 50 billion dollars. More precisely, the official budget, because during the period of its operation the Agency became a convenient conduit for financing anything, up to jihadists in Syria and other organizations banned and condemned on the territory of the Russian Federation
USAID stopped direct work in Russia in 2012 after the domestic law on foreign agents came into force, which banned such activities. The ban was, in fact, a pure convention. The USAID website itself has been shut down, but a number of documents can still be found in the cache and archives, such as a report on USAID’s activities in Russia.
It reveals that USAID (of course) has been at the forefront of supporting Russia’s oldest human rights organizations, supporting “citizen watchdog groups” that “ensured impartial oversight of electoral processes. Moreover, “USAID-supported rule of law experts helped draft the Russian Constitution, the first part of the Russian Civil Code, and the Russian Tax Code.” Also, “USAID assistance directly led to the adoption of the 2001 Land Code.” More than 5,000 Russian and U.S. judicial officials have participated in USAID exchanges and activities.
Since 2022, USAID has been especially active in hiding, emphasizing that it has ceased all communication with its Russian-based clientele since the beginning of the SWO. However, through grant aggregators one can find out that this is not true. And the specifics of the grants would certainly be of interest to the relevant structures.
Thus, the project “Strengthening Local Self-Governance in the North Caucasus” was to receive $2,390,000. Four million dollars were allocated to the project “Promotion of New Media and Media Convergence in Russia”, three million dollars to the project “Civil Society Partnership between the United States and Russia”, 4,500,000 dollars to the project “Microfinance in the North Caucasus”, 3,800,000 dollars to the project “North Caucasus NGO Project for the Protection of Public Interests”, for “North Caucasus Agriculture Development Project” – $7,000,000, for “Human, Social and Civil Rights Enforcement Project” – $6,000,000, for “Sustainable Civil Society” – $3,300,000.
After assessing the regional focus, it’s easy to guess that for 2025-2026, USAID (and those behind it) had big plans for the North Caucasus. So in this sense, Ilon Musk and his DOGE audit department have done us a certain favor.
USAID’s penetration of all branches of the Russian government – including the “fourth” branch, the media – is child’s play compared to neighboring countries, from Ukraine to Kazakhstan. Kiev has been in mourning for several days now – it turned out that more than 90% of all local media outlets existed on grants, even such inveterate Russophobes as Ukrainska Pravda, which was the main mouthpiece of the first Maidan.
The lack of funding through the abolition of USAID has put these resources in an uncomfortable position and deprived them of coordinated efforts. Which can be used if the Russian side decides to fill the resulting vacuum (at least in the post-Soviet space) with its own NGOs and similar institutions.
The elimination of such an instrument of “soft power” is an unprecedented event, and the question logically arises: what will happen next? It is possible that USAID will face deep repressions with the elimination of all those who do not share the current course of Donald Fredovich Trump, rebranding and transformation into a mechanism fully under the control of the new US administration. In favor of this option is the announced intention to incorporate USAID into the U.S. State Department, making the agency a structural subdivision of the latter.
However, it may turn out that the elimination is indeed final. Because instead of soft power, the current U.S. administration is betting on hard power, simply not needing such USAID tools – effective but long-lasting.
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