MOSCOW (AP) — An independent news site that criticized Russia’s military’s action in Ukraine declared it “undesirable” through the government Thursday and banned its operation in the country as part of the Kremlin’s new crackdown on dissent.
Founded in 2014 and founded in Latvia, Meduza has for years been one of the most popular Russian-language independent news sites, with an audience of several million people. The site was blocked in Russia about a year ago, shortly after the invasion of Ukraine began, along with the websites of several other independent media outlets. It is available through virtual personal networks.
The Prosecutor General’s decision came on the same day that the editor of the online website Mediazona, which reports on the judicial formula and law enforcement, said it accused him in absentia of spreading false and defamatory information about the Russian military.
The Russian government also evicted a human rights center named after Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov from its assets and shut down the country’s oldest human rights organization.
The Russian prosecutor general’s order stated that Meduza’s activities posed “a risk to the foundations of the constitutional order and national security of the Russian Federation. “
The resolution applies in particular to the Medusa Project organization, which publishes Meduza. It exposes its news managers and executives to prosecution, as well as others who comment on news followers and readers who share links to articles on social media.
“It’s a very important status,” editor-in-chief Ivan Kolpakov told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday.
“It is ridiculous to talk about our paintings as a risk to the Russian constitutional order,” Kolpakov added.
A law passed in 2015 allows Russia to claim foreign organizations as undesirable, banning them from operating in Russia and subjecting Russians connected to them to fines and imprisonment. The law accompanies a measure requiring organizations in Russia that obtain foreign investment to identify themselves as “foreign agents,” which can damage their credibility.
Both have been used to stifle or discredit dissent.
In the past, Meduza had been declared a foreign agent and was forced to post a sign noting the designation in his stories.
Despite being blocked, Meduza managed to remain his big follower, Kolpakov said, and that’s what he said motivated the decision to claim him as unwanted.
Authorities “were incredibly frustrated that Meduza would continue to operate,” the news hounds in Russia, a broad policy of Russian developments, said.
The move is meant to intimidate, he added, but the team is giving up.
“The assumption is that it will be very difficult to work, much more than before, but, nevertheless, there is no preference for breaking,” Kolpakov said.
Meduza is not the first independent media to be declared unwanted, but it is arguably the largest and most productive known. Investigative media outlet Proekt banned it as unwanted in 2021. Two other investigative websites, Vazhnye Istorii and The Insider, were slapped in the face. last year.
Vazhnye Istorii and The Insider continued their coverage, and Proekt journalists teamed up to launch an investigative project.
Kolpakov said Thursday’s resolution was expected. The team had predicted since the launch of Meduza in 2014 that the site would one day be blocked in Russia and that the government would “grant us attractive status. “
“So I would say morally and organizationally, we’re in a position for that. But that doesn’t mean it would be easy,” Kolpakov said.
The Russian government unleashed a major crackdown on independent media, human rights teams and opposition activists in 2021, branding dozens of Americans and organizations as foreign agents, arresting some activists and forcing many to leave the country under pressure.
The crackdown intensified after Russia sent troops to Ukraine 11 months ago and passed a law criminalizing data discrediting Russian troops.
Prominent opposition politician Ilya Yashin was sentenced in December to eight and a half years in prison under the law. Another prominent opposition figure, Vladimir Kara-Murza, is detained and faces the same charges.
In the Mediazona case, publisher Pyotr Verzilov was accused of breaking the law for social media posts about Bucha, the city near Kiev where the bodies of many civilians were discovered after the withdrawal of Russian troops. Many gave the impression of having been executed, however, Russia said the deaths were staged as a provocation.
The Russian Investigative Committee said Verzilov “created a real risk of forming a false opinion about the aims and objectives of the army’s special operation in Ukraine,” the news firm reported Thursday. official rate.
Also on Thursday, the human rights center named after Sakharov said the Moscow city government had ordered it to leave its premises.
The Sakharov Center said rents were canceled for houses where a cultural center and museum operate and it houses the archives of the deceased Soviet nuclear physicist who became a dissident and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975 for his human rights work.
The deportation is related to an extension of the Foreign Agents Act in December that bans the status for organizations designated as agents.
“The Island of Liberty is fashionable in Russia, which has moved away not only from the legacy of Sakharov, but also from the total national culture of humanism, which fights for facts and justice,” he said. the outlet said in a statement.
This week, Russia also shut down the country’s oldest human rights organization, the Moscow Helsinki Group.
The authorities accused the organization of violating its legal registration in Moscow by running human rights bodies outside the Russian capital, accusations the organization denounced as “small and absurd. “
Founded in 1976, the organization demands the freedom of political prisoners and the status quo of democratic rights.
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Litvinova reported from Tallinn, Estonia.