"Head of Russia’s oldest human rights organization said Monday that a television report aired Sunday implicating her group of being funded by foreign elements aims to undercut any possible criticism of the upcoming presidential elections by Russian public groups. 'They picked these tired allegations because people like us, rights activists, are training people to work as monitors during the imminent presidential elections,' Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow-Helsinki Group, told RIA Novosti. 'This is the only reason why this story resurfaced.' The Russian presidential elections will take place on March 4 and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is still the leading contender, despite a sharp drop in public popularity. A state-run TV channel Rossia One aired a report on Sunday, saying that the British intelligence officials paid 23,000 British pounds to the Moscow-Helsinki Group in 2004. [...]"