The center is named after Andrei Sakharov, a Nobel Peace laureate and Soviet dissident.
Sergei Lukashevsky, the center’s director, called the court’s decision “disgusting” and said in a private Facebook post that it reflects the reality of contemporary Russia. “Everything that is happening today is the exact opposite of what Sakharov fought for,” he added.
The decision was denounced by the French foreign ministry, which said in a statement that the step “once again illustrates the campaign of repression being waged by the Russian authorities against those still speaking out freely in Russia.”
Separately, the Russian Ministry of Justice on Friday designated six Russians, including academics and activists, as “foreign agents” for opposing the Ukraine war.
The crackdown on human rights groups and critics under Russian President Vladimir Putin has been expanding for years, but has escalated since the invasion of Ukraine. The authorities have brought in laws and measures described by Human Rights Watch as an “all-out drive to eradicate public dissent” in the country.
The Sakharov Center has been one of the prominent targets. Since 2014, the group has been designated under the law as a “foreign agent,” a term used to denote a spy or traitor in Russia. This year in January, the center was informed that the city of Moscow was evicting it from its premises, following a December law banning state bodies from supporting “foreign agent” groups.
The center held its last public event in February and was given until end of April to dismantle its museum exhibition and close its physical space.
Sakharov, who died in 1989, was a nuclear physicist instrumental in developing the Soviet hydrogen bomb. But he later warned about the dangers of an arms race and became a dissident who sharply criticized the Soviet Union.
In 1975, in recognition of his work on advancing the cause of human rights in the Soviet Union and campaigning for disarmament, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The center in Moscow hosted a permanent exhibition on political repression in the Soviet Union, including historical items related to the gulag, the Soviet Union’s system of prison and forced-labor camps. Its library held a collection of literature on Russia’s modern history as well as Sakharov’s writings. It also provided a space for activists, journalists and academics to promote human rights issues.
Lukashevsky, the center’s director, vowed to continue the group’s work. “The heritage does not belong to the regime, but to the people,” he wrote on Facebook.
