The ranks of Russia’s so-called “enemies” have grown once again. And who has been awarded this honorary title this time? Human rights defenders, of course — people who help those who genuinely need protection and often have nowhere else to turn.

A Russian court has designated the human rights group SK SOS an “extremist organization.” The project helps LGBTQ+ people and women subjected to violence in the North Caucasus: it advises victims, organizes evacuations from dangerous regions, and provides medical and psychological assistance.

In other words, the Russian state has declared people who save victims of violence to be “extremists” — people who help those threatened by relatives, local security forces, or representatives of the so-called traditional community.

This is not some abstract organization. According to SK SOS, over nine years the group has supported 925 people and helped 434 of them leave the North Caucasus. Since the beginning of 2026 alone, the project has received 353 requests for help — more than during the entire previous year.

This is precisely the work that the Russian state now officially associates with “extremism.”

Representatives of SK SOS learned about the court’s decision only almost a month later, from a letter sent to the organization’s director, David Isteev. The human rights defenders intend to appeal the ruling, although they acknowledge that they had expected such a development after the authorities designated the so-called “international LGBT movement” an “extremist organization.”

For people’s safety, the organization disabled donations from Russian bank cards and reduced its activities inside the country. The project currently has neither employees nor volunteers in Russia. Nevertheless, it is not ending its assistance.

“For the people who turn to us for help, nothing changes. We remain ready to advise them, assist with evacuation, and provide medical and psychological support,” SK SOS said.

All of this is happening while Russia is building official relations with the Taliban regime, ceremonially receiving its representatives and negotiating with them as respected state partners.

The result is an already familiar Russian logic: people who save women and LGBTQ+ people from violence are “extremists,” while representatives of a regime that deprives women of fundamental rights are official guests and partners.

There is almost no reason left to be surprised. Russia itself is increasingly resembling such regimes: it persecutes human rights defenders and independent organizations, destroys freedom of speech, labels dissenters “foreign agents,” “extremists,” and “terrorists,” and wages a war accompanied by the torture of prisoners and prisoners of war and the mass killing of civilians.

Russia has practically drawn level with these states. The differences are becoming fewer and fewer.

The Russian authorities have not yet decided to restore the death penalty, but with the constant expansion of the list of “enemies,” “traitors,” and “terrorists,” the next stage of this evolution is not difficult to predict.

There is another difference: representatives of the authorities enthusiastically enjoy the fruits of Western civilization while simultaneously taking these opportunities away from ordinary Russians.

Vladimir Putin’s proclaimed struggle against everything “corrupting and Western” sits uneasily even with his own public image. For many years, the Russian president has appeared in Italian Brioni and Kiton suits and wearing expensive Swiss and German watches.

The population is offered prohibitions, domestic substitutes, and stories about a hostile West, while the authorities continue to enjoy its most expensive achievements. The Russian elite demands austerity, sacrifice, and rejection of the West exclusively from everyone else.

In this respect, it still differs from the Taliban leadership: the latter at least lives, to some extent, in accordance with its own ideology. For Russia’s rulers, talk of the “decaying West,” traditional values, and a special path is merely convenient camouflage borrowed from the most closed and repressive regimes.

They are not fighting the Western way of life. They are fighting ordinary people’s ability to choose for themselves how they wish to live.

They are not banning Western goods. They are banning freedom.

They designate as extremists not those who threaten, abduct, and kill, but those who help their victims escape.

The decision against SK SOS is therefore not an isolated incident, but part of the systematic destruction of independent assistance in Russia. The state seeks to leave people alone with violence — without human rights defenders, independent journalists, lawyers, or any safe way to ask for help.

All that remains is to hope that the struggle against everything “corrupting and Western” does not descend into North Korean absurdity, where full access to the global internet is available only to a narrow circle within the ruling elite.

At one point, a single Steam activity marker in Pyongyang gave rise to a joke that the account might belong personally to Kim Jong Un or to someone in his immediate circle. There is no evidence of this, but the North Korean regime has indeed reduced the circle of possible owners to a minimum.

Given Russia’s present direction, the joke no longer seems entirely fantastical.

Perhaps one day citizens will be left only with prohibitions, domestic substitutes, and stories about the hostile West, while the real internet, Western products, expensive suits, Swiss watches, and gaming platforms remain available only to selected representatives of the authorities.

And we seem to know already who among them will be first…

Source: the Telegram channel “Politzek-Info” — https://t.me/politzekinfo/9682