Authorities also designate Anti-Corruption Foundation as ‘terrorist’ group and consider total ban on WhatsApp.By News AgenciesPublished On 29 Nov 202529 Nov 2025Click here to share on social mediashare2ShareRussian authorities have outlawed Human Rights Watch as an “undesirable organisation”, a label that, under a 2015 law, makes involvement with it a criminal offence.Friday’s designation means the international human rights group must stop all work in Russia, and opens those who cooperate with or support the organisation to prosecution.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listHRW has repeatedly accused Russia of suppressing dissenters and committing war crimes during its ongoing war against Ukraine.“For over three decades, Human Rights Watch’s work on post-Soviet Russia has pressed the government to uphold human rights and freedoms,” the executive director at Human Rights Watch, Philippe Bolopion, said in a statement.“Our work hasn’t changed, but what’s changed, dramatically, is the government’s full-throttled embrace of dictatorial policies, its staggering rise in repression, and the scope of the war crimes its forces are committing in Ukraine.”The decision by the Russian prosecutor general’s office is the latest move in a crackdown on Kremlin critics, journalists and activists, which has intensified since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.In a separate statement on Friday, the office said it was opening a case against Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot that would designate the group as an “extremist” organisation.Separately, Russia’s Supreme Court designated on Thursday the Anti-Corruption Foundation set up by the late opposition activist Alexey Navalny as a “terrorist” group.The ruling targeted the foundation’s United States-registered entity, which became the focal point for the group when the original Anti-Corruption Foundation was designated an “undesirable organisation” by the Russian government in 2021. Advertisement Russia’s list of “undesirable organisations” currently covers more than 275 entities, including prominent independent news outlets and rights groups.Among those are prominent news organisations like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, think tanks like Chatham House, anticorruption group Transparency International, and environmental advocacy organisation World Wildlife Fund.Founded in 1978, Human Ri …
