Russian spy chief who once participated in US-funded program suggests that other Russians who participated in US-funded programs are disloyal

Sergei Naryshkin Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

• SVR head Sergei Naryshkin claimed the US plans to meddle in Russia’s upcoming presidential election.
• He said the US plans to use Russian participants of US-funded programs.
• Naryshkin participated in a USAID program in 2004, a Russian lawyer and antiwar activist said.

The head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service claimed Thursday that the US could meddle in Russia’s upcoming presidential election. Washington could do this, SVR chief Sergei Naryshkin baselessly claimed, by creating a “fifth column” in Russia consisting of Russians who participated in US-funded exchange programs.

The term “fifth column” refers to a group of people working to undermine a nation’s interests from within.

Naryshkin failed to mention that he himself participated in a US-funded program. Specifically, he contributed to a 2004 USAID assessment of the impact of US assistance on the development of the rule of law in “newly independent states” in Europe.

Naryshkin was part of the Leningrad Oblast steering committee. His role was described in the USAID report as chairman of the Committee on External Economic and Foreign Relations with the Government of Leningrad Oblast.

Anastasia Burakova, a Russian lawyer and antiwar activist, first pointed out Naryshkin’s participation in the program.

“As Russia’s presidential election draws nearer, the US authorities are coming up with ever more sophisticated ways to illegally interfere in democratic processes,” Naryshkin said Thursday, according to Meduza. “Washington intends to ramp up its work with Russian alumni of American exchange programs.”

“If these students are ‘processed properly,’ in the Americans’ view, they’ll be able to replace the non-systemic opposition that fled en masse to the West and become the linchpin of the fifth column [in Russia],” Naryshkin added.

Naryshkin was parroting Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has repeatedly warned of a fifth column within the country’s borders.

The West “will try to bet on the so-called fifth column, on traitors—on those who earn their money here, but live over there,” he said in March 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine. “Live, not in the geographical sense, but in the sense of their thoughts, their slavish thinking.”