Putin’s Pre-emptive Strike: Kremlin Moves to Liquidate ‘Foreign Agents’

File Photo of Kremlin Tower, St. Basil's, Red Square at Night

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Daria Litvinova – February 19, 2015) Activist Pavel Chikov could react only with sarcasm when a court handed down a winding up order against his Agora legal advocacy association. “As the first NGO ever to have been liquidated in a Russian court, we are so proud,” he wrote on Twitter. The next day, another organization, […]

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Interfax: Russian NGOs that won government grants won’t abandon foreign financing

Kremlin and St. Basil's

MOSCOW. Dec 5 (Interfax) – The Russian civil rights organizations that have won in a tender for government grants are not going to abandon foreign financing. “These are our projects. We are pursuing them regardless of financing sources. We are not carrying out projects ordered by Russian or foreign funds,” Memorial historical and civil rights society head Arseny Roginsky told […]

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U.S. ambassador asked to get Obama to raise Russian human rights issues with Putin

File Photo of Barack Obama Sitting at Desk with Mike McFaul Standing Next to Him Facing Him

(Interfax – KAZAN, Russia, July 8, 2013) The U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, has promised to do his best to satisfy a request from Russian human rights group Agora that the human rights situation in Russia be put on the agenda of the planned Russian-American summit this autumn, Agora’s leader said. “The proposal was raised during our meeting with […]

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Second Russian NGO fined under ‘foreign agent’ law

Kremlin and St. Basil's

(Interfax – May 29, 2013) A group based 300 km northeast of Moscow has become the second Russian non-governmental organization to be fined under a controversial new law that obliges NGOs to register as “foreign agents” if they receive funding from abroad and are deemed to be involved in “political activities”, the privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax reported on 29 […]

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Rights Group Slams Order to Register as ‘Foreign Agent’

Kremlin and Moscow Environs Aerial View

(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, April 30, 2013) Prosecutors in Russia’s republic of Tatarstan have ordered the Agora human rights group, which has provided legal assistance to people detained at anti-Kremlin protests, to register as a “foreign agent,” a demand it has dismissed as “unlawful.” Under a controversial law approved by President Vladimir Putin last year, NGOs funded from abroad and […]

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