The Washington Post reports that yesterday Russia forced 90 foreign grassroots human rights and other nongovernmental organizations to cease all activity until they meet cumbersome corporate registration requirements.

Is this but the first shoe to drop?

Included in the interruption of activity were Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders. Russian NGOs, like Moscow Helsinki Group and Memorial, are so far unaffected.

UCSJ has been expressing its concern and that of its human rights colleagues since President Putin signed the law last January. The law sets stringent and intrusive reporting standards for the independent sector that monitors and advocates for human rights and democracy reform.

In today's climate of hate and intimidation in Russia (see my yesterday's post) we worry that this is the first shoe to drop, even though the Kremlin claims bureaucracy, not politics, is at play.

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