Russia and Belarus cheer dismantling of USAID as rights groups voice concerns

Moscow and Belarusian officials have welcomed the impending dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as rights groups, health researchers and independent media voiced concerns about how a withdrawal of funding may impact their operations.

The Trump administration has indicated that the foreign aid agency — which delivers billions of dollars in humanitarian aid to projects overseas — will be all but completely shut down as part of a larger Elon Musk-led project to streamline US government bureaucracy.

On Thursday, officials said the Trump administration announced a plan to slash the number of workers in the agency from 10,000 to around 290, essentially ending many of its operations and leaving the remaining few drastically smaller.

Moscow celebrated the decision, with Russia's foreign minister spokesperson Maria Zakharova on Thursday describing the agency as, "anything but an aid, development and assistance agency."

Instead, she claimed, USAID is a "mechanism for changing regimes, political order [and] state structure".

Former Russian president and deputy chairman of the Russian security council, Dmitri A. Medvedev chimed in to call the move to dismantle the agency "smart".

But civil society groups helping Russian dissidents say USAID's closure would put the future of their work at risk.

OVD-Info, a Russian rights group that tracks political arrests and offers legal aid to those detained and prosecuted, said that while the agency's dismantling has little impact on them, other groups that it helps will be affected.

“Without their existence, our work will become significantly more difficult,” a spokesman for OVD-Info said.

USAID operated in Russia for two decades until it was forced out in 2012. Whilst