Russia’s Federation Council [official website, in Russian] on Wednesday announced [statement, PDF, in Russian; press release, in Russian] it plans to add 12 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to a list of groups that will be investigated for undermining the government. The so-called “patriotic stop-list” includes [RT report] National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the MacArthur Foundation, the International Republican Institute, and other organizations, most of which have ties to the US. The law in Russia [JURIST report], as of May 2015, is that organizations can be declared undesirable if they threaten Russia’s constitutional order or national defense. Proponents of the list say it is needed [press release, in Russian] to keep Russia free from undue foreign influence, but MacArthur Foundation president Julia Stasch says [press release] its inclusion on the list demonstrates a misunderstanding of its mission.

With the signing of this law, Russia is building on its already restrictive laws for foreign NGOs within the country. In 2012 the Russian Federal Council, the country’s upper house of parliament, approved a bill [JURIST report] that labels NGOs that accept international funding as “foreign agents.” In August 2013, Russia’s Constitutional Court received [JURIST report] the first official complaint against the country’s new law, which requires political NGOs receiving funding from abroad to register as “foreign agents.” Kostroma Center was fined 300,000 rubles (USD $9,000) for organizing a roundtable with US diplomats, which investigators said counted as “political activity.” Since the NGO law took effect [JURIST report] in 2012, Russian activists have vowed to challenge it. Leading rights groups, including Memorial [official website], election-monitoring body Golos [official website, in Russian] and the Moscow Helsinki Group [official website] have all chosen to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) [official website]. The US State Department claimed [Reuters report] it had “deep concern” about the new bill, but was likewise reminded by Moscow that such an issue involves domestic rather than international policy. In April 2013, HRW released a report [text, PDF] analyzing the law and calling for its repeal.