Russian authorities on Friday outlawed Human Rights Watch as an “undesirable organization,” a label that under a 2015 law makes involvement with such organizations a criminal offense.

The designation means the international human rights group must stop all work in Russia , and opens those who cooperate with or support the organization to prosecution.

“For over three decades, Human Rights Watch’s work on post-Soviet Russia has pressed the government to uphold human rights and freedoms,” the executive director at Human Rights Watch, Philippe Bolopion, said in a statement. “Our work hasn’t changed, but what’s changed, dramatically, is the government’s full-throttled embrace of dictatorial policies, its staggering rise in repression, and the scope of the war crimes its forces are comm

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