Quote:
Originally Posted by Bluegrassplayer
Why does Russia like this bill?
Because it reduces the cultural influence of what Russia perceives to be an actual assault to its values, of some western entities.
While election monitors, actual pro-transparency institutions and so on can still operate in the clear with nothing to fear, pro LGBTQ lobbies , pro immigration lobbies and the like can't with this bill passed, as a big part of what they do is they secretly buy the influence of otherwise unsuspectable normal people.
And now if they want to do so it will all be tracked down to the last dollar or euro cent. So (example) Soros funds can't anymore end up in the pocket of some institutions linked to some political parties without everyone knowing that's the case, to promote trans-ness or immigration from muslim countries and what not.
If you remember a similar thing happened in Hungary a while ago. And while the EU found the hungarian laws in violation of EU rules (especially when it treated intra-EU donations as foreign), the whole idea was very similar: stopping foreign money to fund culturally obscene (for the government) propaganda.
Russia isn't only about the actual physical attempt of an "empire", it's also about cultural influence. So Georgia bet here is something like "we want to join the EU for the money, the free trade, the movement of people and so on, but we aren't radical cultural leftists". Will it work? no idea.
But what Georgia is trying to signal to Russia is "our intent is to join the EU and become another Hungary, a somewhat russian-leaning, or at least not russian-hating, part of the EU".
Which Russia could actually agree with, maybe.