Doctors Without Borders closes operations in Russia

GENEVA -- Doctors Without Borders said Tuesday it has closed its operations in Russia after 32 years, citing a Justice Ministry letter that said the medical aid group had been removed from a register of foreign nongovernmental organizations.

The aid group, also known by its French name Médecins Sans Frontières and acronym MSF, said it will retain its branch office in Moscow, but operations — run by its Dutch affiliate — have stopped. It was MSF Netherlands whose registration was withdrawn, a group spokesperson said in an email.

MSF has been in Russia since 1992 and has operated programs that provided aid for homeless people and migrants, tuberculosis treatment, and general health care including for infectious diseases such as AIDS.

Russia has banned a wide array of international organizations, groups and movements on the grounds that they threaten the state.

In the past two years, organizations added to the bans include Greenpeace for allegedly threatening Russia’s security and constitutional order; the environmental groups Worldwide Fund for Nature and Wild Salmon Center for projects that would impede economic development, and the LGBTQ “international public movement,” which does not exist as a unified organization. Russia also banned The Moscow Times, a popular English-language news website that operates from the Netherlands.

MSF said it has provided assistance to more than 52,000 people who either crossed into Russia from Ukraine or were internally displaced in Russia since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

MSF said it had been planning to respond to the humanitarian and medical needs of internally displaced people in the Kursk region in Russia, where Ukrainian forces have recently made inroads.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that Russian forces have launched a counteroffensive in the Kursk region to dislodge Ukraine’s troops who stormed across the border more than five weeks ago. It was the first time since World War II that Russian territory was under foreign occupation.

Norman Sitali, the operations manager for MSF programs in Russia, said the aid group was “very sad” to end the programs, “as many people in need of medical and humanitarian assistance will now be left without the support we could have provided to them.”

"MSF would like to still work in Russia again if and when possible,” Sitali said.

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Associated Press writer Jim Heintz in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.