Admin I Tuesday, March 05, 2025
MOSCOW – The Russian government has designated several German non-profit, research and activist groups as “undesirable,” a move that is widely seen as an attempt by the Kremlin to stifle criticism.
The latest organizations to be tagged with the label by the Russian Ministry of Justice include the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a think thank that is affiliated with Germany’s centre-left Social Democratic Party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The German Association for East European Studies was also blacklisted in Moscow on Monday, as was XZ GmbH, an outfit founded by Russian journalists living in exile in Germany.
The feminist organization OWEN – Mobile Academy for Gender Democracy and Peacebuilding was also put on the list, the Russian state news agency TASS reported.
Russia designates organizations that it claims are a threat to national security as “undesirable.” As a consequence, they are often forced to stop their work inside Russia or face prosecution.
Russian citizens risk criminal prosecution if they cooperate with these groups.
Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russian government banned a slew of foundations that are linked to German political parties and revoked the registrations of their offices in Moscow.
However, until now only the Heinrich Böll Foundation, which is close to the Green Party, had been declared an “undesirable organization.”
The Russian Ministry of Justice’s register currently includes almost 150 blacklisted organizations from Germany, the United States and other countries.
In addition to non-governmental organizations critical of the Kremlin, academic institutions are also increasingly being branded as “undesirable.”
