THE HAGUE: Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (Docs With out Borders) stated it was leaving Russia after 32 years following a justice ministry resolution to take away it from a listing of accepted international organisations.
MSF is the newest in a string of Western-funded charities, rights teams and non-government organisations (NGOs) to halt operations in Russia since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Final yr, Russia declared NGOs Greenpeace, Transparency Worldwide and WWF “undesirable”, successfully banning them from working within the nation.
“It’s with a heavy coronary heart that we have now to shut our actions in Russia,” MSF stated late on Monday (Sep 16), including that it had overseen dozens of programmes there since 1992.
The charity stated it had acquired a letter final month from the justice ministry eradicating it from the register of international NGOs in Russia.
The choice utilized to the Dutch department of MSF in Russia however since this was the one affiliation energetic within the nation, it successfully ended the group’s presence there.
There’s nonetheless a “department workplace” coping with non-operational actions in Russia, MSF spokeswoman Maria Borscheva advised AFP.
“To adjust to the choice, we needed to shut our operations within the nation and terminate the contracts of our employees in accordance with all authorized necessities,” she stated.
