Russia blocks website for Khodorkovsky’s Dossier Center

Russia’s federal censor, Roskomnadzor, has restricted access to the website for the Dossier Center — an investigative-journalism nonprofit founded by exiled former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. 

Roskomnadzor added the nonprofit’s website to its list of banned sites on Friday, July 30, on the basis of a decision from Moscow’s Tagansky District Court.

“We haven’t received any orders or notices, so we don’t know the formal reason for the block. But it’s not important: we were blocked not for any violations, but for the fact that we tell the truth about the unlawful dealings of FSB agents, Vladimir Putin’s close associates, and officials, and they are vindictive guys,” the Dossier Center commented on the court’s decision. 

The Dossier Center has published a range of journalistic investigations, including in-depth reports on the 2018 murder of three Russian journalists in the Central African Republic, and about the GRU agents suspected of the carrying out the Skripal poisonings. 

In late June, the Russian authorities blacklisted two organizations linked to Mikhail Khodorkovsky as “undesirable” — the Khodorkovsky Foundation and its subsidiary, the Oxford Russia Fund.