The March 6 report
criticizes the government in Moscow for centralizing power and for what it calls an erosion of government accountability.
Ella Pamfilova, a human rights adviser to President Vladimir Putin, rejected the report. She says the United States "has ceased to be a trendsetter in the human rights area."
But Lyudmila Alekseyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, says the U.S. report is objective on the whole.
(Interfax)