A Moscow court has ruled to dissolve the Sakharov Centre, one of the oldest human rights organisations and museums in Russia named after famed nuclear scientist and dissident Andrey Sakharov, Kommersant reports.
The court ordered the centre’s legal entity status to be terminated. Sakharov Centre head Sergey Lukashevsky told Novaya-Europe that the organisation will appeal the ruling.
“We were ready [for the dissolution]. We primarily tried to not let the liquidation affect what we (as a team rather than the organisation now) can do. But you can never be fully ready morally speaking,” he said. “Sakharov and an aggressive war are totally opposing things. And this is possibly much more painful than the disbanding of a legal entity, albeit one with a long and important history.”
In January, Sakharov Centre chief Lukashevsky was fined three million rubles (€29,400) on 10 counts of violating “foreign agent” laws.