Watchdog

RFE/RL has strongly condemned Russia's decision to block the websites of Current Time and the Russian-language Crimea.Realities project of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service amid the sites' coverage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Access to the sites was blocked on February 28 after RFE/RL refused to comply with Russian state media-monitoring agency Roskomnadzor’s demands to delete information about Moscow's invasion of its neighbor.

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“The Kremlin is desperate to prevent the Russian people from learning the facts about the death and destruction the Russian invasion of Ukraine is causing," RFE/RL President and CEO Jamie Fly said in a statement. "We will continue to provide the truth to the Russian people at this critical moment.”

Roskomnazdor sent its demands in a letter to Current Time on February 27, saying its website carried "information distributed with law violations."

According to Roskomnadzor, the website distributed "inaccurate information of social significance about Russian military personnel allegedly killed or captured on the territory of Ukraine during a special military operation conducted by the Russian Federation's armed forces."

Roskomnadzor ordered Current Time to remove all information about the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, stressing that if it didn’t, its website would be blocked in Russia.

Current Time refused to remove the information in question.

In early February, Roskomnadzor threatened to block eight RFE/RL websites serving audiences in Russia, Ukraine, and Central Asia unless they took down articles tied to corruption investigations by jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny’s team. RFE/RL refused to comply with the demands.

RFE/RL has been informing its audiences about how to continue to get around the block.

Russian-language reporting by Crimea.Realities can be accessed on a mirror site. A Current Time mirror site is also available and material can be accessed using the virtual private network (VPN) nThlink.

In addition, audiences can subscribe to Current Time’s pages on Telegram, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok or watch its broadcasts live on YouTube and subscribe to its channel.

All materials from the Current Time site are also available on RFE/RL's Google Play and App Store applications, which include a built-in VPN.

MOSCOW -- Russia's Supreme Court has upheld its previous decision to shut down one of the country's most venerated human rights groups, International Memorial, amid a continued crackdown on civil society in the country.

The Supreme Court announced its decision on February 28 following a hearing by its three judges who refused to allow defense witnesses to testify.

Supporters of International Memorial were barred from the courtroom in Moscow.

The court rejected an appeal filed by International Memorial's lawyers based on a request by the European Court of Human Rights to suspend the decision until another case brought by Russian NGOs, including Memorial International, challenging the legality of Russia's controversial "foreign agents" legislation was heard.

In December, the Supreme Court ruled that Memorial International, a stand-alone group and the umbrella organization for many regional branches and the Memorial Human Rights Center, should be liquidated for violating the "foreign agents" law.

Also in December, in a separate hearing, the Moscow City Court ordered the closure of the Moscow-based Memorial Human Rights Center on the same charge.

The "foreign agent" law has been increasingly used by officials to shutter civil society and media groups in Russia.

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Rights activists have said there are no legal grounds to liquidate either of the organizations, which have been devoted since the late 1980s to researching and memorializing the crimes of the Soviet Union, as well as to promoting human rights in Russia and former Soviet republics.

They say the Prosecutor-General's Office's demand to shut down Memorial is "a politically motivated decision."

The original 2012 legislation, which targeted NGOs and rights groups, has since been expanded to target media organizations, individual journalists, YouTube vloggers, and pretty much anyone who receives money from outside of Russia and, in the eyes of the Kremlin, voices a political opinion.

RFE/RL has 18 Russian-national journalists on the government's "foreign agents" list and faces over $13 million in assessed fines.