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April 28th, 2017 
Awake Goy 
nsnbc : On Wednesday, three days ahead of scheduled demonstrations on Saturday, Russia’s Prosecutor General banned the NGO “Open Russia”, established by former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky as an “undesirable organization,” and banned all of its activities. Russia is warming up to the 2018 presidential elections.
Photo courtesy Maria Baronova / Instagram.
On Saturday the NGO had planned to hold demonstrations against the current administration headed by President Vladimir Putin, against corruption and Prime Minister Medvedev, and a cohort of current Kremlin policies.
Russian officials formally blacklisted three separate organizations; the Britain-registered “Open Russia” organization, the social movement “Open Russia,” as well as the U.S.-based Institute of Modern Russia. Open Russia was founded by self-exiled former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whose son heads IMR in New York.
In a public statement, the Prosecutor General explained “Their activities are aimed at inciting protests and destabilizing (the) domestic political situation, presenting a threat to the constitutional foundations of the Russian Federation and the security of the state.” The decision makes it a criminal offense in Russia to work for Open Russia or IMR.
In May 2015 Russia implemented its highly controversial law against undesirable organizations. Organizations listed as such are banned in Russia and anyone who works for such organizations in Russia faces fines and possible incarceration.
The decision to launch demonstrations on Saturday and the decision to ban the Khodorkovsky-linked NGOs come as both the ruling United Russia (Our Home Russia) party led by Vladimir Putin as well as the opposition and Khordorkovsky warm up to the upcoming 2018 presidential elections.
The former head of the Yukos oil company who fell out of grace and ended up behind bars after Putin came to power and cleaned up among oligarchs who had held the weak and notoriously drunk president Boris Yeltsin in power while usurping the country’s assets reiterated that he has no plans to directly participate in politics and run as candidate.
Khodorkovsky, who is hobnobbing with the likes of multi-billionaire and Open Society Foundations founder George Soros previously announced that he envisions a role for himself in Russian politics without getting directly involved in party politics and candidacies.
That said, Russia’s increasingly rigorous, pseudo-totalitarian measures against those who don’t pull the party-line of oligarchs around Putin and Medvedev suggest for some that Russia is an oligarchy indeed and one that becomes increasingly oppressive and “the evil Putin once professed to deplore”.
CH/L – nsnbc 27.04.2017
Source Article from https://nsnbc.me/2017/04/27/russia-banned-open-russia-three-days-before-protests-and-presidential-elections/
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