On Tuesday Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the shutdown the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Russia, under a law passed by the Russian Parliament and signed by Putin in May. The Russian Parliament declared the NED an “undesirable” organization under that law, which bans groups from abroad which are deemed a “threat to the foundations of the constitutional system of the Russian Federation, its defense capabilities, and its national security.”

The NED is clearly not simply an NGO, but the very heavily funded “mother of all NGOs” being used in British/Obama “color revolution” operations for regime change around the world. Thus the Putin government’s banning of it has unmistakable significance.

In addition to the reorganization and modernization of the entire Russian defense triad, and Putin’s denunciation of the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty as a war threat, the shutdown of the NED is another loud and clear warning that Russia is aware that it is facing an existential war threat, brought on by the Obama Administration-run coup in Ukraine and declared intent to place NATO weapons on its border. The May law on “undesirables” follows a law signed in 2012 that gave Russian authorities the power to declare organizations “foreign agents” if they engage in any kind of politics and receive money from abroad. Yet after that law, the Obama Administration flagrantly supported a “color revolution” against Ukraine’s legitimately elected government.

With the outright Banderite Nadia Diuk being the vice-president of NED with responsibility for Eurasia for the past several years, the NED was in the center of 2011 attempts to stage a “color revolution” against the Russian government and its elections; and of course was a guiding force in preparing and carrying out the Banderite overthrow of the Ukraine government. “The U.S. would like Russia to cease to exist as a country,” said the director of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolay Patrushev, on June 22 of this year. He also said, “The Americans seek to dominate the world…. It’s clear that the hidden agenda of destabilization of this country [ukraine] is creating an instrument to radically weaken Russia.” President Putin gave a similar assessment of the situation, and the need to take actions against it, to the Security Council meeting of July 3.

In a lengthy editorial in yesterday’s Washington Post, titled “Power Mad,” with a large picture of President Putin, the Post feigns incredulity that NED programs to bring down the regime through education, fighting “corruption,” and promotion of “human rights,” could be outlawed. Demonstrating its “high dudgeon,” the Post also runs an op-ed by Carl Gershman, the President of the NED, called “Putin’s Fear of Civil Society.” It might better be titled, “Putin’s Internal Preparations for the West’s Launching of War.”