It's also some of the Russian oligarch money that came in to western institutions (via shell companies etc - some revealed in the Panama papers) and started inf

It's also some of the Russian oligarch money that came in to western institutions (via shell companies etc - some revealed in the Panama papers) and started influencing the discourse here. Especially in the last 20 years. They finance a lot of the disinformation campaigns, the social division, etc. In the times of the USSR there were surely influence campaigns, but people were more on the look out for it and there was a common external target, so it was easier to unite the country.