MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian authorities searched the Moscow offices of Human Rights Watch and three other prominent advocacy groups on Wednesday, part of a wave of hundreds of inspections that activists say is a campaign to silence criticism of President Vladimir Putin.
Since returning to the Kremlin in May, Putin has tightened controls on non-governmental organisations (NGOs), requiring those with foreign funding to register as "foreign agents" - a term echoing, for some, Stalin-era political repressions and Cold War spying.