Russian banks block donations to human rights organizations

Human rights organizations still operating in Russia are being forced to shut down, despite having committed no crime, after the Kremlin found an extralegal path to cutting off their airflow. The NGOs are accusing banks linked in some way to the government of preventing them from accessing their main source of funding: donations from other Russians. Online pay platforms have yet to offer an explanation for terminating their services to the groups.

“OVD-Info faces a critical situation: we have lost all our ruble donations,” states an SOS published by the defense organization for political prisoners and Russian protestors. Its spokesperson, Dmitri Anisimov, tells EL PAÍS via telephone that “this is the biggest blow the NGO has received in its 14 years of existence.”

Other organizations have encountered the same problem, like immigrant support NGO Grazhdánskoye Sodeistvie, while several others have been forced to close.

The Nuzhná Pómosch foundation [whose name means Help Is Necessary in Russian] was an early casualty of being cut off from such donations, which caused it to shut down in August 2024. Months prior, officials labeled the group a foreign agent, a designation that the Kremlin has now applied to the other NGOs mentioned in this article. Pressured by terminated access to pay platforms, as well as the fear generated in some of its donors by its foreign agent designation, the management of the group announced it was shutting down all activity “because it was practically impossible” to continue.

Anti-domestic violence NGO Nasiliu.net managed to survive for longer, but wound up closing its doors in December for similar reasons, after a decade of fighting gender-based violence.

“Our donation platform [CloudPayments] warned us in 2024 that it would block our transfers,” the organization’s spokesperson, Victoria Odissonova, told this publication a few months ago.

Though CloudPayments did not end up cutting service in 2024, out of precaution Nasiliu.net started using another platform, Yiukassa. CloudPayments did start blocking its transfers in September of last year, when the Kremlin initiated a new wave of repressive measures against Russian civil society, including new amendments pertaining to foreign agents.

According to OVD-Info, there are now at least 1,586 political prisoners in Russia. The NGO has more than 300 lawyers that currently offer free legal assistance to around 90 of them, and provide support to others who have been arrested or whose homes have been raided by the police. OVD-Info also provides advice and assists in risk assessment for citizens who contact the group through Telegram.

“It’s not only that pay platforms see what we do as risky. It’s clear that [officials] are putting pressure on the owners of these businesses so that they stop cooperating with us,” says Anisimov.

“We have explored all possible alternatives in the Russian market and beyond,” continues the NGO spokesperson, adding that they have sought out options in neighboring countries that trade with Russia, “but unfortunately, no option has emerged.”

“Big businesses are refusing to process our data. There are smaller businesses that we don’t trust with our donors’ data, and services like Tribute, which have similarly blocked other organizations and independent media companies,” he adds.

OVD-Info has around 12,000 recurring donors with Russian credit cards. These contributions are joined by other, one-time donations. The organization has managed to soften the blow with around 4,000 new subscriptions based on cards located outside of Russia, but the NGO says that it will not be enough for it to continue operations.

“Regular donations are particularly important to us, because they allow us to plan our work and our budget in the long term,” explains Anisimov. “They let us know how much money we will have in three months, six months or a year, and if we will be able to defend our clients or expand in certain areas.”

The NGO uses CloudPayments, which is owned by the Tinkoff bank. The former owner of the financial entity, Oleg Tinkov, was forced to sell his holdings and leave the country after criticizing the war in Ukraine in 2022.

“They declined to offer us service without any explanation. They claimed that company policy allows them to refuse to give details,” says Anisimov.

Another platform activists have turned to, Yiukassa, has also declined to handle donations to OVD-Info. The service is owned by Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank. “In documents they sent us, it says that they cannot sign any agreement due to their security policy,” says Anisimov, who adds that no further details were provided, supposedly “due to reasons of confidentiality.”

One of the political prisoners defended by OVD-Info is activist Ígor Baryshnikov, who was sentenced in 2023 to seven and a half years in prison for “discrediting the Russian army,” despite suffering from cancer and being the only caretaker for his 97-year-old mother. Sick and forgotten, the blocks on NGOs have endangered the lives of more than 100 Russian political prisoners.

Another case is that of Nadezhda Buyanova, a 69-year-old pediatrician who was sentenced in 2024 to five and a half years in prison for saying that Russia “is the aggressor” to the mother of a child whose father died in the invasion of Ukraine.

“The mother’s testimony is the only proof against her. We were able to secure a ruling in court that she had been illegally fired, but she remains in prison,” says Anisimov.

The NGO thinks it will be able to rise above these new obstacles. “We don’t want to limit our work in any way. That is exactly what Russian authorities want us to do after this attack,” says Anisimov.

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