Foundation
The movement was officially announced by Vasily Yakemenko, (leader of the pro-Putin Walking Together youth movement) on 1 March 2005. The founding conference was carried out on 15 April 2005. It is believed that Nashi was established mainly as a reaction against Ukraine's Orange Revolution in 2004, in which youth-led street protests helped give the presidency to pro-Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko.
Yakemenko claims to have constituted Nashi as a movement to demonstrate against what he saw as the growing power of Nazism in Russia and to take on skinheads in street fights if necessary. While officially, its funding comes from pro-government business owners, it is widely reported that the group also receives direct subsidies from the Kremlin. Yakememko once said to Gazeta.ru that the Kremlin's support makes it possible for them to tell businessmen "guys, we need money for a national project".
Nashi's close ties with the Kremlin have been emphasised by Vladislav Surkov (Deputy Presidential Chief of Staff during 1999-2011), who has met the movement's activists on numerous occasions, delivering speeches and holding private talks. It has been speculated that the Kremlin's primary goal was to create a paramilitary force to harass and attack Putin's critics as "enemies of the State". At one event for political education in summer 2006, the Kremlin advisor Gleb Pavlovsky told members of Nashi that they "lacked brutality": "you must be prepared", he went on, "to break up fascist demonstrations and prevent with force any attempt to overthrow the constitution". Critics have compared Nashi to the Soviet Komsomol and the Hitler Youth.
In 2012 Yakemenko confirmed that Nashi in 2010 alone received funding of about 200 million roubles from the Russian state budget.
The group's headquarters is housed in a ₤20m building in the centre of Moscow.
Read more about this topic: Nashi (youth Movement)
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