"Activist Suffers Severe Injuries in Attack After Illegal Logging Investigation", 12 January 2018

...Russia’s Ministry of Justice removed Environmental Watch on the North Caucasus from the list of “foreign agents” because it no longer receives foreign funding. Andrei Rudomakha, the head of this prominent Russian environmental group, heard the news while in a hospital bed – two weeks earlier he had been severely injured in a vicious attack while investigating suspicions of illegal logging in South Russia...Rudomakha and three other environmental activists...took pictures at a site where a private company, allegedly affiliated with high-ranking government officials, is carrying out logging and construction, which the environmentalists believe is illegal...Last year was Russia’s official Year of Ecology, but conditions for local environmentalists have gone from bad to worse. Since the adoption of the “foreign agents” law in 2012, at least 14 environmental organizations have stopped operating.