The Russian Ministry of Justice has expanded the register of ‘undesirable organisations’: the Russian opposition platform within the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and a further 10 legal entities have been added to it.
In Russia, the publishing house Vidim Books, the Tbilisi Ingush Cultural Centre, the Anti-War Pastoral Initiative, the Institute for Peace and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, the Ukrainian human rights group ‘SICH’ and other organisations.
A resolution to establish a platform within PACE for dialogue with Russian democratic forces was adopted in early October 2025. It comprises 15 people: ten representatives of the Russian opposition who currently live abroad, and five representatives of Russia’s indigenous peoples.
Among the platform’s participants are Garry Kasparov, co-founder of the Free Russia Forum; Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former co-owner of Yukos; Vladimir Kara-Murza, vice-president of the Free Russia Foundation; doctor Andrei Volna, Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and others.
Vidim Books is an independent publishing house based in Slovakia that publishes books in Russian. Many of these books cannot be published or sold in Russia, and their authors are classified as ‘foreign agents’. The publishing house’s authors include Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, Vera Polozkova, Viktor Shenderovich, Dmitry Glukhovsky, Anton Dolin and the singer Monetochka (Elizaveta Gyrdymova).
The Russian register of so-called ‘undesirable organisations’ includes the ‘Nastoyashchee Vremya’ television channel, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, leading universities – including Stanford, Yale and the University of California – as well as humanitarian organisations. Participation in the activities of a foreign or international organisation recognised as ‘undesirable’ in Russia is punishable by criminal prosecution.