The Russian government is trying to shut down the Moscow Helsinki Group, one of the country's oldest human rights organizations, according to a statement on the Moscow court website on Tuesday..

A group with roots in the Soviet era releases an annual report on the human rights situation in Russia.

Valery Borshov, co-chair of the Moscow Helsinki Group, said the authorities had made the "

Borshov said Russian authorities are deliberately destroying the most respected human rights organizations.

“The Moscow Helsinki Group is the oldest human rights organization in the country, so the fact that the authorities want to liquidate us does not surprise me at all”.

Since invading Ukraine in February, Russian President Vladimir Putin has stepped up a campaign to crack down on dissent from independent media, non-governmental human rights groups or political opponents..

This month, opposition politician Ilya Yashin was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for spreading "

And a year ago, the courts closed the Russian Human Rights Center Memorial and its sister organization Memorial International, known for chronicling and maintaining the memory of the crimes of the Stalin era..

The Moscow Helsinki Group was founded in 1976 by dissident Soviet academics and human rights activists to oversee Soviet compliance with the Helsinki Accords, an East-West pact designed to help defuse tensions at the height of the Cold War..

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In 2012, she turned down foreign funding to avoid being labeled a "

Putin has his own Human Rights Council, a body that critics say allowed him to pay lip service to civil liberties while escalating repression.

Last month, shortly before his annual meeting with the Council, he fired 10 members and brought in four new members, including a pro-war correspondent blogger..