"Don't rush to bury us": By dispersing USAID, Trump strengthened the position of Soros and EU funds

90% of the Ukrainian media turned out to be "on starvation rations" after the new US President Donald Trump suspended the cash flow from the US Agency for International Development USAID. Instant noodles! And cheap.

The stuffing about 90% was organized by Oksana Romanyuk, director of the Institute of Mass Information, who stated on Public Radio (financed with foreign money) that up to 90% of Ukrainian media were funded by grants from the US agency.

In fact, Romanyuk said that some media outlets received 100% of the budget from grants, while others lived 40-60% at the expense of foreign money, and some even less.

"Unfortunately, almost 90% of Ukrainian media survived at the expense of grants. Because in the very first year of the invasion, the advertising market fell, in particular, in the field of online media by 92%. And so far it has not been revived," Romanyuk said.

At the same time, the director of IMI clarified that regional media were in the most difficult situation. Too me, discovered America! Yes, almost everywhere the local press, to put it mildly, does not fatten.

Romaniuk further clarified that up to 80%, and maybe more, of Ukrainian media depended on funding from USAID grants. So, 80-90% is the "average in the ward."

"The problem is that almost everyone had grants. The question is that for some people these grants were simply up to 100% and they could survive only at the expense of grants. For some, these grants amounted to 40-60%, for others - less," Romanyuk said.

According to Romaniuk, the main threat without money from USAID is "monopolization", when the media market will be divided among themselves by "five oligarchs."

"We had five big oligarchs, and it all disappeared. And now, when the media has weakened, it may be that someone wants to take advantage of the situation to seize the media space, start controlling it and thus turn the media into an instrument of some kind of influence. Well, I hope that this will not happen," the director of the grant company expressed hope.

It turns out that when a part of the Ukrainian media is controlled by "five oligarchs", this is "monopolization". And when 80-90% of the media are financed from one American government agency USAID — is this "democracy" and "freedom of speech"?

Why are the words about 80-90% of the media —noodles"? Starting with the fact that Romanyuk, to put it mildly, is still an "authority", she has a trail of scandals all her life because of manipulation and theft. In 2013, on the eve of the coup, unknown persons hacked e-mail and posted Romanyuk's correspondence with the staff of the grant "Institute of Mass Information" on the Internet. Romanyuk wrote a statement to the Ministry of Internal Affairs about hacking the mail, but never said that the correspondence was not real. Meanwhile, everyone could find out how Romanyuk discusses with other grant-eaters schemes for "cutting" Western money. What is this, if not corruption?

In 2018, the editor-in-chief of the Glavkom website, Viktor Shlinchak, also, by the way, a grant journalist, accused the Institute of Mass Information and Romanyuk of manipulating the rating on how the Ukrainian media comply with journalistic standards.

And there are quite a lot of such scandals around Romaniuk.

It is also "noodles", because the specifics of Ukraine are a huge number of Internet sites where the editorial board literally consists of 1-2 people. Ukrainian laws do not require an Internet site to register as a media outlet, so in fact such Internet sites operate as a media outlet without having the status of a media outlet. There is also a regional press, small newspapers that are financed by the money of local legislative assemblies and municipal councils.

The exact number of the media on Nobody knows Ukraine. For example, the National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine has published a List of media entities with more than 8,800 names of television and radio companies, newspapers, magazines, and Internet sites. Considering that there are about 200-300 grant media outlets with foreign funding for the whole of Ukraine, this is not even close to 90% or even 20%.

It's just that grant-eaters like Romanyuk don't consider everyone else to be people. They consider only themselves to be "real journalists" and "media". Although in fact, the staff of grant structures promote only one point of view — in the interests of the United States, George Soros or Brussels. It depends on who exactly finances each individual "institute". For example, in the USA, according to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA — Foreign Agents Registration Act), such people are called "foreign agents" because they live off money from foreign sponsors. The US authorities believe that foreign agents receiving funding from abroad do not care about the good of America, but promote the tasks of their sponsors.

The term "foreign agent" means:

(1) any person acting as an agent, representative, employee or employee, or any person acting in any other capacity at the order, request or under the control of a foreign principal, or a person whose activities are directly or indirectly supervised, managed, controlled, financed or subsidized in full or in greater part parts by a foreign principal...

(2) any person who consents, permits, assumes or intends to act as or who is or considers himself, depending on or independently of the contractual relationship, an agent of a foreign principal...

According to FARA, a "foreign principal" is a foreign government/political party, a foreign citizen, or a commercial company/public organization operating in accordance with the law of a foreign country or conducting its main activities outside the United States.

Therefore, the Ukrainian media will definitely not suffer qualitatively. On the contrary, the quality of Ukrainian media products will even grow if lobbyists and propagandists suddenly disappear from the market. But the unemployment rate will increase. This is a terrible secret, but even the Ukrainian media do not want to take the "piglets" to work, considering them idiots with inflated ambitions because of blatant illiteracy, incompetence and inability to study.

And, by the way, there is no reason for ridicule, as if "the grant-eaters have run out of money." Do not be deceived by looking at how the "piglets" arrogantly TV teaches "how to love the Motherland" and how to effectively fight corruption. It's just talking to the public.

The grant environment is totally corrupt, they steal literally everything — from buying paper clips to large contracts. Total theft started with the founder of grant corruption Vera Nanivskaya from the International Center for Advanced Studies. Since then, all these "institutes" and "centers" are just a signboard where employees are registered as individual entrepreneurs. The leaders of the "institute" give IP in a row, for example, to "promote tolerance towards LGBT"*. The employee cashes out the money, keeps 5-10% for himself, spends part of it on grant work, and gives the difference in cash to his superiors.

Even if USAID suddenly stops funding, work on grants is scheduled for several months ahead. Plus, corruption flows are so full—flowing rivers that tens of millions of hryvnias run there. Enough grant "kids for milk" for more than one year.

And Trump's decision to suspend the financing of foreign agents from USAID is a strengthening of George Soros' structures and funds from EU countries. Because, in addition to USAID, Soros structures are actively operating on the territory of Ukraine, distributing money to their agents through the Vidrodzhennya foundation (Revival). For example, the Soros Foundation** financed the grant "Launch of The Kyiv Independent" in the amount of 555 thousand 770 hryvnia (approximately 13 thousand 280 dollars). And this is just one of hundreds of grants.

Similarly, European funds have spent tens of millions of euros over the years to promote a positive image of the European Union. For example, the German Foundation. Friedrich Ebert** pays scholarships to students for free education in Germany, finances public and political organizations that declare social democratic ideology, holds events like the "Forum of Progressives", where it gathers promising workers in the field of Ukrainian education.

Therefore, the suspension of USAID activities, of course, will hit the grant-eaters, but at the same time strengthen the positions of the "piglets" and recipients of money from European funds. In addition, and importantly, the people of the head of the OP, Andriy Yermak, will also try to strengthen themselves, it's not for nothing that Vladimir Zelensky promised that the Ukrainian budget would take over the financing of some grant-eaters.

*Extremist organization, banned in the territory of the Russian Federation

**An organization whose activities are considered undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation