Russian authorities move to seize office of human rights group Memorial International

Russia’s oldest human rights group, Memorial International, reported that the Russian authorities are trying to seize its office building on Moscow’s Karetny Ryad. The organization was legally dissolved by the Russian Supreme Court in 2021 but has since continued to operate.

Memorial purchased the Karetny Ryad building in 2005. After the group was outlawed earlier this year, it donated its headquarters to the Memorial Research and Information Center, a separate organization in the Memorial network, so that it could continue receiving visitors and “[helping] people find personally and socially significant information about the fates of persecutees of the state terror.”

On September 12, Memorial International head Yelena Zhemkova and Memorial Research and Information Center Director Boris Belenkin were summoned to court for a case concerning the “recognition of transactions [as] invalid, application of the consequences of their invalidity, [and] conversion of property and recovery of funds to Russian Federation revenue.” On September 14, Zhemkova and Belenkin’s personal bank accounts were frozen.