Russia’s State Duma Speaker Vyasheslav Volodin charged the State Department’s U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) with running “criminal networks” internationally which carry out coups d’etat against government they don’t like. According to TASS: “In line with its charter, USAID should support the economy, healthcare, and education as well as offer humanitarian responses. In fact, the agency has become a criminal network that operates in more than 100 countries and controls an annual budget of $50 billion to $60 billion.” These funds are used, Volodin stated, to prepare coups, using its “democracy promotion program,” and has done enormous harm to Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia and many other countries. It has spent at least $2 billion in former Soviet republics, 52% of which went to Ukraine.
USAID is also under serious scrutiny by the Trump administration for their activities, with thousands of workers being placed on leave.
“Now it is important that those guilty of its crimes be punished,” said Volodin. He also mentioned that USAID was involved in funding research into biological weapons and that a parliamentary investigation three years ago into Pentagon projects to set up biolabs in Ukraine found that former President Joe Biden and his son Hunter were behind plans to develop and distribute weapons of mass destruction globally. Zelensky and Biden turned Ukrainian citizens into test subjects, he said.