The judicial order and the police enforcement of the ban on the Russian human rights organization Memorial have been sharply criticized by the German government.

The decision was "more than incomprehensible," said a spokesman for the German government, there was "great concern" that people who suffered oppression and repression in Russia will now have their votes withdrawn.

It is "an expression of our common European self-image" to be able to expose and denounce violations of human rights.

Johannes Leithäuser

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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The human rights organization Amnesty International called Memorial "the moral backbone of Russian civil society" and recalled that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov founded the organization's work three decades ago.

With the ban, the Russian state is giving "a shocking self-testimony".

He fights “the confrontation with one's own history of injustice” and wants to “monopolize individual and collective memory”.

Russia is violating "the basic values ​​of the European Convention on Human Rights," which it has signed itself.

The left-wing member of the Bundestag Gregor Gysi called on the Russian government to sue the Moscow court's ban ruling before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, in order to demonstrate that it does not support the Russian ruling.

The German government also announced on Wednesday that “there will soon be a meeting between Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. She also recalled the planned meeting between Chancellor Jens Plötner's foreign policy advisor and the Kremlin's Ukraine representative, Dmitry Kosak. Regardless of the talks planned for January 10 between the United States and Russia in Geneva on the subject of Ukraine, the Federal Government still wants the talks in the so-called Normandy format (Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany) to resolve the crisis would continue in eastern Ukraine. The EU also announced on Wednesday that it would like to participate in such consultations.

EU Foreign Representative Josep Borrell said that "if Moscow wants to talk about the security architecture in Europe and security guarantees," it is not just a matter for America and Russia.

Rather, he demanded that the EU be present in these negotiations.

"Such negotiations only make sense if they take place in close coordination with and with the participation of the EU."