Moscow Brands Soldiers' Mothers Group 'Foreign Agent'
Russia on Friday officially labelled a regional rights group that monitors abuses in the armed forces a "foreign agent" as Kiev and the West claimed Russian troops are involved in fighting in Ukraine.
The Russian Justice Ministry added a group called Soldiers' Mothers of Saint Petersburg to its register of "foreign agents". The ruling means the group must use the wording in its paperwork and follow stricter rules.
Russia introduced a law 2012 requiring all NGOs engaged in political activity with even a modicum of foreign funding to register as "foreign agents", a term thick with connotations of Cold War espionage.
Rights groups have battled ever since to avoid using the label. After most refused to register voluntarily, the justice ministry said it would add them to the registry automatically.
Alexander Gorbachev, an activist from Soldiers' Mothers of Saint Petersburg, said the ruling would "of course make our work more complicated".
"It will be even more difficult for us to receive information from the army, from military structures," he told Agence France Presse. "People will still turn to us but helping them will be much harder."
The West and Kiev said this week that Russian regular troops are on the ground in Ukraine, fighting alongside ragtag formations of pro-Russian separatists.
Moscow has denied the claim even though indications have multiplied over the past few days that Russian soldiers have been deployed in the region.
Citing military commanders, a wife of a paratrooper from central Russia told Agence France Presse on Thursday that some 350 soldiers from the town of Kostroma had been sent on military drills close to the border with Ukraine but had then been deployed "outside Russia".
She said some 15 wounded soldiers had returned to the town this week along with several body bags.
Gorbachev of Soldiers' Mothers of Saint Petersburg said that his group did not have any reliable information on Russian soldiers being wounded or killed in Ukraine.
Source: Agence France Presse
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