Putin urges Russian businessmen to support rights NGOs

October 2, 2015 JRL Russia List Economy, Business, Investment, Trade, Nonprofits, Activists, NGO's, Politics, Government, Protests, Elections

(Interfax – Moscow, October 1, 2015)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called on businessmen and entrepreneurs to render financial support to Russian human rights non-commercial organizations.

“I fully and completely join the call and believe that we all together and I personally must urge, here, right now, I’m urging our citizens, all our business structures to render support to non-commercial organizations, including the human rights ones,” Putin said at a session of the presidential human rights council on Thursday [1 October].

He noted that it would undoubtedly be beneficial to the development of civil society.

The Russian president agreed that earlier NGOs had had practically no alternative sources of funding. “But one cannot say that there are no such sources today. We have allocated R5bn [around 76m dollars] for these purposes this year. Certainly, there is never enough money, perhaps, we could have [allocated] 10 and 20bn, but we do what we can,” Putin s! aid.