Officials in Russia's second largest city, St. Petersburg, are now required to report about their contacts with foreign entities every three months.
According to a document adopted by the city administration on October 5, the officials must fill a special form indicating the dates, locations, and purposes of their meetings with representatives of foreign organizations and companies.
A St. Petersburg lawmaker, Maksim Reznik, told RFE/RL that the new document is a move toward "a new Iron Curtain" – referring to the times when any contacts of Soviet citizens with foreigners was under strict government control.
Another local lawmaker, Boris Vishnevsky, said the document has no sense and adds to bureaucratic hurdles.
Moscow's relations with the West have plunged to levels of acrimony unseen since the end of the Cold War following Russia's military seizure of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and an ensuing war between Kyiv's forces and Russia-backed separatists that has killed more than 9,500 people.