The Kremlin on Wednesday accused the United States of interfering in Russia's internal affairs, as a top election observer group said the end of operations by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) will endanger free elections, DPA reported.
"The character of work by the agency's members in our country very often had nothing to do with humanitarian aid," Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich said in a statement.
"There were attempts to interfere with political processes ... including with elections of various levels, and civil society," Lukashevich said, in official comments on a Kremlin decision to ask USAID to leave the country.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland dismissed such allegations.
"We completely reject the notion that our support for civil society, democracy, human rights in any way interferes with elections, whether in Russia or anywhere else in the world," she said. "We do these programs all over the world. We are even-handed as to access to the resources for political parties, et cetera."
A spokeswoman for Golos, Russia's biggest vote monitoring NGO and a recipient of USAID support, said the loss of American funding made future free and fair elections questionable in the country.
"All of what we are doing is under threat of being shut down," said Liliya Shibanova, director of Golos. "This is a huge blow ... we had absolutely no expectation of it."
The group would seek other funding, but proper independent monitoring of regional elections scheduled in some Russian provinces on October 14 is already in jeopardy, Shibanova said in comments to the Interfax news agency.
"In such a short space of time we certainly will have no way to find funds (replacing those from USAID)," she said.
Shibanova's comments came a day after the US State Department announced it was curtailing USAID's 20-year presence in Russia at the request of the Kremlin.
The United States remains "committed to supporting democracy, human rights and the development of a more robust civil society in Russia," Nuland said.
The Golos Association has been a thorn in the Kremlin's side for years for publicizing election law violations and identifying, by name if possible, responsible officials.
The overwhelming majority of people implicated in Golos' election fraud reports have been linked with Russia's ruling party Our Russia, headed by President Vladimir Putin.
Video and text reports published by Golos of ballot box stuffing, voter intimidation and vote tally manipulation were a contributing cause for massive anti-government demonstrations across Russia in December, following a national parliamentary election won by Our Russia.
Russian state-controlled media in late November alleged that Golos, because of its substantial funding from USAID, was acting in the interests of the US, and possibly under the supervision of the CIA. Golos staff have denied the allegations.