How Russia attacks democracy and corrupts democracy and politics worldwide

For some years now it looked as if political corruption should rank as an existential threat to modern civilization, democracy, the environment and maybe even to the human species. Civilization because political corruption tends to flourish best when there is conflict. Democracy because corruption works best in secrecy under cruel, immoral-evil tyrants, theocrats and kleptocrats. The environment because it is easiest and fastest to generate major wealth and revenues by exploiting easy to access natural resources and polluting the planet in the process.

The New York Times reports on how Russia exports pro-tyranny, anti-democratic political corruption on a vast scale worldwide.

Russia Secretly Gave $300 Million to Political Parties and Officials Worldwide, U.S. Says

Russia has covertly given at least $300 million to political parties, officials and politicians in more than two dozen countries since 2014, and plans to transfer hundreds of millions more, with the goal of exerting political influence and swaying elections, according to a State Department summary of a recent U.S. intelligence review.

Russia has probably given even more that has gone undetected, the document said.

“The Kremlin and its proxies have transferred these funds in an effort to shape foreign political environments in Moscow’s favor,” the document said. .... The State Department document was sent as a cable to American embassies around the world on Monday to summarize talking points for U.S. diplomats in conversations with foreign officials.

U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald J. Trump, the Republican candidate who defeated Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. Its methods included the use of cyberoperations to spread online disinformation. U.S. intelligence officials also found that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia authorized a campaign to try to hurt the candidacy of Joseph R. Biden Jr. when he ran for office against Mr. Trump in 2020.

The Russians pay in cash, cryptocurrency, electronic funds transfers and lavish gifts, the document said. They move the money through a wide range of institutions to shield the origins of the financing, a practice called using cutouts. Those institutions include foundations, think tanks, organized crime groups, political consultancies, shell companies and Russian state-owned enterprises.

The money is also given secretly through Russian Embassy accounts and resources, the document said.  

The State Department said in the summary that it was urging governments to guard against covert political financing “not just by Russia, but also by China and other countries imitating this behavior.”

As one can imagine, countries doing this corruption business are not going to support pro-democracy politicians or political parties. They are going to support corrupt autocrats, kleptocrats and theocrats. That is why Russia supports Trump and the Republican Party and its politicians, not Democratic politicians or the Democratic Party.

This post is intended to be just another warning about the many avenues of attack on worldwide democracy and honest governance that are now being used to advance the cause of corrupt tyranny.