MOSCOW, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- Two U.S. nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have ceased work in Russia and withdrew their personnel, including Russian citizens, local media reported Wednesday.
The National Democratic Institute and the International Republic Institute have re-deployed their seven Russian workers to Lithuania, fearing that they could be prosecuted under a new treason law.
Directors Tamerlan Kurbanov and Natalia Budayeva, together with their families, moved to the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.
Moscow's business Kommersant daily reported that the two directors had come under the scrutiny of the Russian Federal Security Agency and asked their head offices to move them out of the country for safety reasons.
The Russian State Duma, the lower house of the parliament, last July passed a law that substantially restricted activities of nongovernmental organizations in Russia.
Russian authorities closed the local bureaus of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) at the end of 2012.
In another sign of tension in ties between Moscow and Washington, Russia on Wednesday terminated an agreement on cooperation in law enforcement and drug control with the United States.
The Russian government website published an order signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev saying that the decade-old deal does not address current realities and has exhausted its potential.
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