Putin gives grants out for “motorcycle pilgrimage” and “Eurasian integration”

Russian non-profit organizations have received millions of rubles for patriotic actions and the promotion of traditional values.

In a fourth contest for financing, the last in 2016, the biker club the Night Wolves was allocated 3.1 million rubles (approximately $51,000) for a “motorcycle and automobile pilgrimage and [efforts for] the unity of fraternal Slavic peoples through public diplomacy.” Their project is called the Slavic world.

The organization Boevoe Bratstvo, led by former governor of the Moscow region Boris Gromov, received 3 million rubles (approximately $49,300) to finance a tour across Russia of its play Molodaya Gvardiya.

The Pamyat Pobedy foundation was allocated 6.5 million rubles (approximately $106,900) for “combining scientific research and expert polls in order to identify a range of axiological features [possessed by] the populations of the Eurasian Economic Union member states [as well as] for the formation of instruments to promote an ideology of Eurasian integration based on traditional values [and] preserving the memory of the Victory [in the Second World War].”

A total of 4.6 billion rubles (approximately $75.6 million) were awarded in the form of presidential grants in 2016.

The Night Wolves and Boevoe Bratstvo had previously received presidential grants for their projects. Alexei Navalny estimates that the Night Wolves and related institutions received 56 million rubles (approximately $920,900).