Russia’s oldest human rights organization, the Moscow-based Helsinki Group, was dissolved on Wednesday after a court ruled it was not properly registered, amid a crackdown on the country’s last major critical voices, Reuters and AFP reported.

Members of the Helsinki Group in Moscow Svitlana Astrakhantseva (left) and Henri Reznik (right) participated in the process of closing the NGO.Photo: Pavlo Bednyakov / Sputnik / Profimedia

A Russian court on Wednesday ordered the dissolution of the Moscow Helsinki Group, Russia’s oldest human rights non-governmental organization.

The court of the city of Moscow “satisfied the lawsuit of the Ministry of Justice of Russia” for the liquidation of this NGO and its exclusion from the official register of legal entities, according to the Telegram court message.

Founded in 1976 by dissident Soviet scientists, the group produced annual reports on the human rights situation in Russia and was one of the few independent human rights organizations left in the country after the closure of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights group Memorial.

Its original purpose was to monitor the Soviet Union’s compliance with the Helsinki Accords, an agreement between East and West aimed at easing tensions at the height of the Cold War but later expanded to support democracy and civil rights.

Russia’s Justice Ministry filed a lawsuit against it in December, claiming the group was only registered to defend human rights in Moscow and not elsewhere in the country. The group rejected this argument as illogical.

During an emotional address to the court on Wednesday, the co-chairman of the group, Valery Borsov, told the judge and representatives of the Ministry of Justice that the liquidation of the group would put an end to the activists’ decades of work.

“You are committing a great sin. You are destroying the human rights movement, you are destroying it,” he said.

“The liquidation of the group is a serious blow to the human rights movement not only in Russia, but also in the world,” he added.

Reading the decision, judge Mykhailo Kazakov said: “The motion (of the Ministry of Justice) is accepted.”

Since sending tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine in February, President Vladimir Putin has stepped up Russia’s efforts to suppress dissent, whether from independent media, non-governmental human rights groups or political opponents.

Putin has his own Human Rights Council, a body that critics say allows him to increase state oppression.

Last November, shortly before his annual meeting with the Council, he removed 10 of its members and brought in four new ones, including a pro-war blogger.