The Democratic Community of Russian-Speakers in Finland has been recognized as an undesirable organization in Russia

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On July 8, 2024, the Russian Ministry of Justice added the Democratic Community of Russian-Speakers in Finland to the list of undesirable organizations.

According to Russian law, the list of undesirable organizations includes organizations whose activities are considered threatening "the constitutional order, defense capability, or state security of the Russian Federation."

The first such organization was Open Russia, which was added to this list back in 2017.

Over the past two years, several activist communities registered in Western countries have been recognized as undesirable, including the Anti-War Committee of Russia.

This means that such an organization cannot conduct any activities, organize branches, or anything else on the territory of the Russian Federation.

Our organization has not conducted or planned to conduct any activities on the territory of the Russian Federation. We are based outside the Russian Federation, in Finland, and will continue the activities that we have been conducting for three years now - anti-war, human rights, activist, cultural, integration, etc. (according to our charter).

Participation in the activities of such an organization in Russia is subject to administrative and criminal liability.

What kind of participation is possible?

- participation in events organized by the community and dissemination of information about them (reposts)
- organization of events (this primarily concerns active participants of the organization, especially those listed in the register)
- financing (transfer of funds to the organization)

How can I find out about participation?

- authorities can monitor personal social networks, open chats and public events offline. Reposts and participation are subject to administrative and criminal liability. It is unknown whether Russian authorities and their spies will do this.

- List of participants (concerns the list of participants after official joining the organization and paying the membership fee) - non-public information, the dissemination of which is prohibited by Finnish law.

The public composition of participants is visible only in the registration register (at the moment, these are only the organizers).
The greatest risks are for the organizers and public speakers.
The list of subscribers is visible on Instagram, on the Facebook page and in the Facebook group, as well as on Twitter. In the TG group, the list of participants is hidden, accounts are visible only when chatting.
There have been no charges for subscribing to social networks yet (only in Belarus), prosecution for likes is also a myth for now.

The same applies to money transfers - only a small group of the organization knows about them, who have access to the bank account. The bank itself also sees money transfers. (When making a transfer through PayPal, only your nickname is visible in the ko-fi system - so it is better not to write your full name there).

For participation in the activities of the organization, there may be an administrative fine (from five to five hundred thousand rubles) and, as a next step, the initiation of a criminal case with a term of imprisonment of up to 4 years, for the organizers of the NO - up to 6 years.

In practice, we know of one case where a girl with dual citizenship (RF and USA) was detained and taken into custody for donating in support of Ukraine.

Visiting the consulate.
In practice, it has been safe so far.
Cases of refusals to issue a passport have only just appeared (2-3 cases, not in Finland).
If possible, it is better to perform other notarial actions outside the consulate.

Trips to the RF
- the biggest risk!
- people have been randomly checked at the border for a long time. They can check phones and other electronic means of communication. The best way is not to travel at all. And if you do go, have a spare "clean" phone without social networks loaded on it. Everyone makes their own decision and weighs their own risks.