The Russian Federation Council has demanded that the Prosecutor-General's Office, the Foreign Ministry, and the Justice Ministry scrutinize the operations of 12 foreign nongovernmental organizations in Russia for their compliance with Russian law.
Most of the NGOs placed on the so-called "patriotic stop list" on July 8 by the Federation Council have some connection to the United States.
The list includes billionaire philanthropist George Soros's Open Society Foundations, the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the MacArthur Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and the Education for Democracy Foundation.
It also includes the East European Democratic Center, the Ukrainian World Congress, the Ukrainian World Coordinating Council, and the Crimean Field Mission on Human Rights.
Russian lawmakers claim those NGOs' operations in Russia are aimed at affecting the internal political situation in the country.
