According to the U.S. State Department, democracy and human rights regressed in Russia last year. The claim is included in the department’s annual report about human rights worldwide.
The U.S. department’s Acting Secretary of State for Democracy, Jonatan Ferrar, claims that government accountability is threatened by the centralisation of power in the executive branch, a compliant State Duma, corruption in law enforcement, the harassment of some NGOs and media restrictions. “We should not be alarmed by such reports as Americans are alarmed by the reports we publish regularly about human rights violations in the US,” commented Nataliya Narochnitskaya, the Head of the European branch of the Democracy and Cooperation institute.