Russian authorities have outlawed Human Rights Watch as an “undesirable organisation”, a label that, under a 2015 law, makes involvement with it a criminal offence.

Friday’s designation means the international human rights group must stop all work in Russia, and opens those who cooperate with or support the organisation to prosecution.

HRW has repeatedly accused Russia of suppressing dissenters and committing war crimes during its ongoing war against Ukraine.

“For over three decades, Human Rights Watch’s work on post-Soviet Russia has pressed the government to uphold human rights and freedoms,” the executive director at Human Rights Watch, Philippe Bolopion, said in a statement.

“Our work hasn’t changed, but what’s changed, dramatically, is the government’s full-throttled embrace of di

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