Halya Coynash: World-renowned Memorial targeted in Russian ‘foreign agent’ clampdown
Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to journalists' questions during a press conference with his Turkish counterpart in Konstantinovsky Palace outside Saint Petersburg on August 9, 2016.
As well as effectively paralyzing the Levada Centre, Russia’s main independent pollster by formally labelling it a ‘foreign agent’, the justice ministry has initiated the same procedure with the renowned Memorial Society. The situation here is rather different, but the aim surely identical, that being to undermine, if not totally crush, independent civic organizations working in Russia.
