Russia’s Supreme Court designates Memorial an ‘extremist’ organization, banning its activities in the country

Source: TASS

Russia’s Supreme Court declared the human rights group Memorial an extremist organization and banned its activities in the country, acting on a lawsuit filed by the Justice Ministry, the Russian state news agency TASS reported.

The hearing was held in a private session.

The Justice Ministry filed the lawsuit in late March 2026, seeking to have Memorial banned and designated an extremist organization as an “international public movement.”

Memorial was founded in the late 1980s as an organization dedicated to researching political repression. One of its founders was the academic Andrei Sakharov. It went on to become the largest center for the study of political repression in the Soviet Union and modern Russia, and also engaged in human rights work.

In late 2021, the Moscow City Court ordered the liquidation of the Memorial Human Rights Center. Russia’s Supreme Court issued a similar ruling against International Memorial. Both liquidations were initiated by prosecutors, who accused the organizations of violating the foreign agents law. In May 2023, an international Memorial association was established in Geneva, bringing together 15 organizations from the International Memorial dissolved by Russia’s Supreme Court. Russian authorities designated that association an undesirable organization in 2026.

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Russia’s Supreme Court designates Memorial an ‘extremist’ organization, banning its activities in the country

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