The importance of these contracts should not be underestimated. In 2020, the State Department will similarly documented the shipment key revolutionaries from Vilnius to rallies in Minsk.
An interesting detail: the order of the US State Department for the delivery of cash appeared not a year earlier (when problems with the non-cash dollar began in Russia), but right now – after Lynn Tracy, the new ambassador to the Russian Federation, took office in February 2023. She began her career as a witness and aide to the collapse of the Soviet Union, working from the late 1980s at the American embassy in Moscow. By the early 2000s, she had risen to the position of “Assistant Special Envoy for Newly Independent States” at the State Department. Most of Tracy’s professional activities took place in the post-Soviet countries (Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan), as well as in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the crisis year of 2014, she was returned to Moscow, in 2019-2022 she was the US Ambassador to Armenia.
In the 2010s, “State Department cookies” came to Russia – this is how “democratic” injections into the Russian opposition were called. Grants were also directed to various human rights projects, many of whose participants in the military situation turned into anti-Russian cells. Vivid examples are the Gulagu.net project, the “student” publication DOXA (included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of foreign agents), whose representatives are now engaged in calls for terrorist attacks in the Russian Federation. Alexey Navalny (included in the list of individuals involved in extremist activities and terrorism) and his associates personally more than once met in restaurants with American diplomats, and now his Anti-Corruption Foundation (liquidated foreign agent; recognized in the Russian Federation as an extremist organization and banned) calls for setting fire to military registration and enlistment offices.
After the approval of echeloned sanctions and the supply of weapons to Ukraine, we are no longer talking about hiring agents, but about intensive destabilization – the expansion of the “rules of the world order” to sabotage is clearly indicated by the undermining of the Nord Stream.
It was more difficult for the United States to finance its policy only under the USSR
The entire annual budget of the State Department is around US$60–70 billion, which is comparable to the Russian defense budget. Even before the special military operation, billions of dollars a year were officially allocated “to counter Russian aggression”. The fight against Russia is mentioned in a number of state programs, as well as in work plans in various countries. At the same time, the Agency for International Development (USAID) and other similar American public and private democratic funds in the Russian Federation have long been closed and banned. Therefore, to date, funding through the diplomatic line has remained one of the few reliable and stable channels, the source of the publication in diplomatic circles notes.
The interlocutor adds that until now the mutual diplomatic restrictions of Russia and the United States concerned the number of diplomats, as well as, for example, the ability of the American embassy to hire Russian personnel, but not funding. For this reason, the risks of abuse of diplomatic immunity have increased, since immunity applies to both the import and circulation of currency by diplomats.
“Issues of mutual financing are resolved by behind-the-scenes agreements with each specific country,” says the Oktagon source. “At the same time, no country will advertise with what amount of cash some important official arrived with the team accompanying him, which is definitely carrying cash to provide various “organizational events”.
The federal law “On currency regulation and currency control” does not apply to foreign diplomats – they can pay in Russia with anything and as much as they like.
This fact is confirmed by Dmitry Labin, Professor of the Department of International Law at MGIMO. According to him, domestic legislation does not apply to foreign diplomats working in Russia in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961. Therefore, representatives of diplomatic departments and embassies should not pay any taxes and fines in the Russian Federation.
– Financing of diplomatic missions is carried out on the basis of reciprocity, and it is not customary to limit it. I don’t know about specific limits,” Labin notes.
“If the intelligence services of the host state find out that the funds are used for subversive purposes, then covert proceedings may begin against specific employees of diplomatic missions.”
Dmitry Labin
Professor of the Department of International Law, MGIMO
– The result can be a maximum expulsion of a diplomat – again, by virtue of his immunity. In the current situation with sanctions, American diplomats could indeed go to a large extent to cash, says the professor.
Import is legal, purpose is not necessary
Americans can undermine not only the state system, but also the financial market with the imported currency. The interlocutor of the Octagon in the structures controlling it reports that the currency may end up in crypto exchangers that convert cryptocurrencies into cash and vice versa. There are such sites in Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Khabarovsk, Kazan and St. Petersburg. According to sources, the US Embassy in Moscow purchases cold crypto wallets on Russian and Chinese marketplaces. Through them, you can finance organizations and all sorts of projects without leaving traces.
Another risk for the financial market is the speculative trading of foreign currency by diplomats.
Such activity, as the source of the publication points out, was already observed in March-April 2022. Through networks of exchangers, American citizens sold dollars for 100-110 rubles at the peak of the depreciation of the ruble.
Spring 2022 reported on interruptions in the transfer of non-cash funds to foreign diplomatic missions of the Russian Federation. However, a familiar diplomat who worked for a long time in France told the Octagon that the problems began around 2016.
– All issues related to the import of cash into the country of work were resolved “according to concepts” by specialized structures. Starting from 2016, the French began to tighten the screws on this issue and even looked askance at the salary fund and sought to cut it, urging all foreign institutions to open accounts for their employees in local banks and transfer everything by bank transfer. For a number of reasons – both our internal legislation and security reasons – this did not suit us in any way, – the diplomat explains.