The immediate reason for this article was another step taken by the Russian authorities: Rosfinmonitoring added the human rights project OVD-Info and more than thirty organizations associated with Memorial to the register of terrorist and extremist organizations. OVD-Info stated that it considers the decision politically motivated, noting that in modern Russia those who refuse to remain silent about human rights violations and political persecution are increasingly labeled as “extremists” and “terrorists.”
However, OVD-Info is far from the only example. Over recent years, the Russian authorities have declared extremist, undesirable, or liquidated numerous organizations whose activities were connected not with violence, but with civic engagement, human rights advocacy, anti-corruption work, education, religion, and historical research.
The Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), for example, was declared an extremist organization. According to the authorities, its activities were aimed at destabilizing the socio-political situation and organizing illegal protests. Its supporters and many international organizations consider the decision politically motivated and link it to the foundation’s anti-corruption investigations.
The organization Memorial, which spent decades documenting political repression, preserving historical memory, and defending human rights, was dissolved, while structures associated with it were later added to extremist registries. The formal grounds were alleged violations of legislation on “foreign agents,” but human rights advocates regard the move as persecution for preserving the historical truth about political repression.
In 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court declared the so-called “International LGBT Movement” extremist. The decision drew widespread international criticism because it concerned not a specific organization but effectively a broad social movement and people united by sexual orientation and gender identity.
Earlier, the structures of Jehovah’s Witnesses had also been declared extremist. Russian authorities cited anti-extremism legislation and objections to the organization’s religious literature. Representatives of the faith reject the accusations and emphasize the exclusively peaceful nature of their activities.
A special role in these developments is also played by the Russian Orthodox Church, which, according to its critics, has become increasingly integrated into the state ideology over recent years. For this reason, many critics view the persecution of independent religious movements, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, as a consequence of the privileged position of the Russian Orthodox Church within the modern system of power.
All of these cases share a common feature: those targeted are people engaged in anti-corruption work, the defense of human rights, the preservation of historical memory, independent civic activity, religious practice outside state control, or simply those who openly speak about what the authorities would prefer to keep hidden.
Those targeted are not the people accused of terrorism, but those who demand transparency.
Russia itself has come so close to the practices it officially claims to oppose that it no longer hesitates to remove from its list of enemies regimes that resemble it in their methods of governance, such as the Taliban. In a certain sense, they are united by the fact that human rights organizations become targets of repression. In addition, both systems are often accused of exploiting primitive public fears regarding homosexuals and representatives of other religions.
At the same time, the state does not hesitate to reward individuals accused of involvement in war crimes and crimes against civilians in Ukraine and elsewhere. This concerns not only the events in Mariupol, Bucha, and other tragic episodes of the war, but also a number of international incidents that have led to investigations and diplomatic conflicts.
Former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London with radioactive polonium-210 and died after weeks of agony. A British inquiry concluded that the murder was carried out by Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun and that the operation was likely approved at a high level of the Russian state.
The European Court of Human Rights later found Russia responsible for the murder.
It is particularly striking that Andrey Lugovoy later became a member of the Russian State Duma.
In 2018, former GRU officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok. They survived, but British citizen Dawn Sturgess later died after accidentally coming into contact with the discarded container that had contained the poison. The United Kingdom officially attributed responsibility for the operation to Russian intelligence services.
In the Czech Republic, explosions at an ammunition depot in Vrbětice killed two people. Czech authorities stated that the sabotage operation had been carried out by officers of GRU Unit 29155. This led to the largest diplomatic crisis between Russia and the Czech Republic since the end of the Cold War.
After Russian troops withdrew from Bucha, mass graves and the bodies of civilians were discovered. According to Ukrainian authorities, more than 450 people were killed. International organizations and investigators documented numerous killings of civilians in areas that had been under Russian military control. Russian authorities reject these accusations.
The state’s reaction to the events in Bucha was no less revealing. On April 18, 2022, the 64th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade was awarded the honorary title of “Guards.”
One of the most shocking facts was that the accusations were followed not by public investigations and punishment, but by state awards and honors.
Reports also noted that the brigade’s commander, Azatbek Omurbekov, received further official recognition after these events.
Another tragic symbol of the war became Mariupol. The city suffered massive destruction, and the strike on the Drama Theatre, near which the word “CHILDREN” had been written in large letters, became one of the most widely known episodes of the conflict. The exact number of victims remains unknown, but thousands of lives are believed to have been lost. According to Ukrainian authorities, the death toll may amount to tens of thousands. The scale of destruction and casualties is so vast that establishing a complete picture remains extremely difficult.
In reality, this list could continue almost indefinitely. Poisonings, sabotage operations, torture, assassinations of political opponents, attacks on civilian targets, domestic repression, and operations beyond Russia’s borders have long ceased to appear as isolated incidents.
But even readers’ patience has limits.
Therefore, we have limited ourselves to only a few of the most widely known examples, which by themselves allow conclusions to be drawn about the scale of what is happening.
Against this backdrop, the question increasingly arises: should the international community adopt a harsher assessment of the actions of the Russian state? And should people stop harboring illusions about its future evolution? Despite the preservation of formal electoral mechanisms, the mechanisms of democratic transfer of power are being actively dismantled. Critics point to what they consider the unconstitutional fifth presidential term and pervasive censorship, including restrictions affecting ordinary public communication.
In their view, the modern Russian system increasingly resembles a nominal democracy under centralized control. It has retained the outward attributes of elections inherited from a more open period of history while steadily stripping them of their real substance. How much longer should the world wait before its internal reality becomes an exact copy of regimes already recognized internationally as symbols of political violence and terror? And is it not already time to provide an objective international assessment of what Russia is doing both within its borders and beyond them?
And who is really the terrorist organization?