The Russian Justice Ministry has added Free Russia Foundation, a US-based organisation funded by exiled Russian activists, to its list of “extremist organisations”, published on its website on Thursday.
The list included 54 other organisations alongside the Free Russia Foundation, deemed to be “sub-units” of the “anti-Russian separatist movement”, a vaguely defined organisation that Russia’s Supreme Court declared “extremist” in June.
The organisations on the list include indigenous groups such as Free Buryatia, Free Dagestan, Free Yakutia and Asians of Russia foundations, the Free Ingria movement, the Pacifist Association of Sakha community and the World Chechen Congress.
The Justice Ministry first demanded that the “anti-Russian separatist movement” be declared extremist in April, saying that the non-existent organisation aimed to “destroy the multinational unity and territorial integrity” of Russia.
Lawyers suggested that the extremist designation would give Russian law enforcement agencies licence to persecute national movements in Russia’s republics, as well as anyone who denied that the occupied territories of Ukraine, including Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, “belonged to Russia”.
The Free Russia Foundation was founded in 2014 by Russian emigrants in Washington DC to support civil society and victims of political persecution. The Russian authorities declared it an “undesirable” organisation in 2019.