The Foundation for Combating HIV, a network of journalists, and an American company have been added to the list of “undesirable” organisations.

The Ministry of Justice has added the US-based company East View Information Services, the German journalists' network n-ost, and the Dutch “Robert Carr Fund” to its list of “undesirable organisations,” according to an update on the agency’s website.

The American company now declared “undesirable” was founded in 1989 by Vladimir Frangulov, who emigrated from the USSR, and Kent Lee, then a Columbia University student. They originally distributed declassified Soviet military journals. Today, East View provides access to periodicals, books, microfilms, and databases from Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Middle East to academic institutions, government bodies, corporations, libraries, and law firms worldwide.

East View’s founders also have a legal entity in Russia—IVIS LLC. Frangulov and Lee were its founders. It is one of the largest information resource distributors for universities and libraries in Russia. According to the IVIS website, in 2024, more than 600 organisations in Russia and abroad subscribed to their database. Among these were the Russian Central Bank, the office of the Governor of St Petersburg, the Parliamentary Library, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Higher School of Economics, the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), Russian State University for the Humanities, Peoples’ Friendship University, St Petersburg State University, as well as major state libraries across the country.

The IVIS database provides access to the archive of Pravda newspaper since 1912 and Izvestia since 1917, as well as Russian academic journals, including those from Russian Academy of Sciences and Russian Academy of Education institutes, and the Herald of Moscow State University. In addition, it included major newspapers such as Kommersant, Vedomosti, and Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

The reasons for East View’s inclusion in the “undesirable organisations” list are unknown. On social media, Frangulov spoke out against the invasion of Ukraine and shared posts supporting the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In recent years, East View has published English-language books on repression in Russia and on media coverage of the wars in Ukraine and Syria.

The German organisation n-ost was founded in Berlin in 2006 and brings together more than 500 journalists covering events in Eastern Europe. The organisation condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and announced that it would only cooperate with Russian media outlets that also condemn the war and do not receive government funding. n-ost collaborates with numerous Ukrainian media and assists with coverage of the war in Ukraine. For example, it held a training session for journalists from various countries on how to cover events in occupied territories.

The Robert Carr Fund, established in 2012, funds various organisations combatting the spread of HIV. The fund has run programmes in 130 countries around the world. The organisation is named after Robert Carr, a doctor and HIV activist who worked in many countries.