Past the addressee

It's strange that

appears in the government without official discussion. On the other hand, it’s probably time to stop being surprised by such precedents. The bill concerns non-profit public organizations, but is not discussed at all with these organizations themselves. In particular, to

no one approached with a proposal to discuss it.

There is a large community of non-profit organizations in Russia. As far as I understand, they were not involved in the discussion and writing of this bill. His appearance was preceded by various statements by high government officials and President Putin himself, indicating that organizations receiving funding from abroad are one way or another under suspicion. In a sense, something like this could be expected.

There are a number of provisions in the bill as it stands now that are cause for concern. This is a ban on foreign organizations having branches and branches in Russia. I haven’t studied the issue thoroughly yet, but I have a feeling that this is a unique measure. Even among, to put it mildly, less democratic neighbors in the CIS, even in Belarus, there is no hint of such a ban. Organizations may oppress, but at least at the legislative level, prohibitions are not introduced. We are not talking about the West at all. The bill undermines the enormous work that has been carried out for many years by very respected organizations, often very distant from politics. The president said he would not allow foreign funding for political activities. But at the same time he did not define what political activity is. According to the law, parties are already not financed from abroad. Here we are talking about support for education, medical, humanitarian programs - a lot of useful initiatives that, if the amendments are adopted in the form in which they exist now, may suffocate.

Another clause of the bill prohibits the activities of unregistered public organizations. Instead of a notification procedure, a permitting procedure is being introduced. This narrows the human right of association guaranteed by the Constitution. In addition, this is a de facto re-registration requirement for existing organizations. It is necessary to bring their charters into compliance with this bill. Moreover, this requirement is limited to a period of one year. This is a very strange measure, because, according to various sources, we have hundreds of thousands of different public organizations, and it is impossible for all of them to re-register. There is a suspicion that this kind of law can be used for selective application in relation to those organizations that for some reason turn out to be objectionable to the authorities. And let everyone else shudder and be afraid. This kind of application of legislation in Russia has already become quite common. This bill, it is suspected, may also go down this path.

It is envisaged to suspend the work of organizations whose activities do not coincide with those stated in the charter. This is also an extremely strange norm, because if an organization is not funded by the state, then the state should not care whether their activities correspond to their stated goals. Whoever finances it should keep an eye on it.

These are all restrictive measures, measures aimed at suppressing civil organizations and civic activity in Russia in general.

It is not yet clear how events will develop further. One can hope that the bill will not be adopted in its current form. For now we can only talk about concerns. But the very intention to pass such a bill goes in line with the curtailment of political liberalism and democracy in Russia. In this sense, it raises concerns. If this had happened 6 years ago, one could have dismissed it as some kind of crazy idea. But today, all the activities of the authorities in the sphere of democratic freedoms have a very specific focus, and there is every reason to treat this with concern.