Russian prosecutors accuse a researcher of cooperating with a banned foreign organization. Her only link to it was that the group read her report and quoted it.

Russian authorities have opened an administrative case against Olga Sibireva, a researcher at the SOVA Research Center, accusing her of cooperating with an “undesirable” organization because that group drew on SOVA’s published research.

On August 4, police conducted an “inspection of the premises” at Sibireva’s home, seizing electronics and books.

During the “inspection,” officers from Center E, Russia’s anti-extremism police, raised the possibility that she had cooperated with an “undesirable” organization but refused to name it at the time.

On August 17, Sibireva appeared at the Naro-Fominsk city prosecutor’s office after receiving a summons. There, officials told her she was accused of cooperating with the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, which Russian authorities designated “undesirable” in 2024.

The case rests on the alliance’s own documents, which cited Sibireva’s annual reports on freedom of conscience in Russia for 2024 and 2025. Both reports were publicly available on SOVA’s website.

The SOVA Center said that neither Sibireva nor the center itself has ever had any contact with the alliance, and that the alliance appears on SOVA’s website only in connection with that designation.

This may be the first case in which a person has been accused of cooperating with an organization on the grounds that the organization cited them. What’s more, this is not a case of an expert comment provided for that purpose: an organization designated ‘undesirable’ used publicly available material from another project. That in itself appears to us to contradict both the letter of the law and common sense.