Lavrov says US creates thousands of NGOs, plenty of them in Armenia

The United States is actively promoting the idea of creating non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as a means of influence, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in the Primakov Readings Forum on Monday.

He noted that by now, Washington has created thousands of non-governmental organizations on the territory of the United States and abroad.

“Hundreds of them operate in post-Soviet countries; there are plenty of them in Armenia and Kyrgyzstan,” Lavrov stressed, adding that the United States is now trying to introduce such structures into other Central Asian states. At the same time, according to the Russian FM, these organizations can hardly be considered non-governmental.

Lavrov noted that the reason is the financing of most of these funds by the American Agency for International Development. He did not rule out that the main goal of NGOs is to influence domestic policy in other countries.