Two U.S. non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have stopped their activities in Russia and withdrawn their personnel, including Russian citizens from the country for safety reasons, local media reported Wednesday. The NGOs, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republic Institute have re-deployed their seven Russian workers to Lithuania, fearing that they could be prosecuted under a new treason law.
Moscow's business Kommersant daily reported that the two Directors of the NGOs had come under the scrutiny of the Russian Federal Security Agency and asked their head offices to move them out of the country for safety reasons.
The Russian State Duma, the lower house of the parliament, last July passed a law that substantially restricted activities of non-governmental organizations in Russia. Russian authorities closed the local bureaus of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) at the end of 2012.
In another sign of tension in ties between Moscow and Washington, Russia on Wednesday terminated an agreement on cooperation in law enforcement and drug control with the United States. The Russian government website published an order signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev saying that the decade-old deal does not address current realities and has exhausted its potential.