A Moscow court docket abolished one in all Russia’s oldest rights teams. Russian prosecutors banned the work of a bunch of journalists in exile, labeling it an “undesirable group.”

And on Friday, President Vladimir V. Putin used the event of Holocaust Remembrance Day to restate false claims justifying the invasion of Ukraine, as his authorities used the levers of the state to stifle unbiased voices and management how Russians see the battle.

The Kremlin’s renewed push this week to quash dissent comes because the battle nears the tip of its first 12 months, with Western officers estimating greater than 100,000 casualties on all sides. Russia and Ukraine are locked in a grinding battle of attrition in jap Ukraine, attempting to reconstitute their forces forward of the spring, when every is more likely to try a big offensive.

Russian shelling killed no less than eight civilians over 24 hours in jap Ukraine, the positioning of probably the most intense preventing in latest months, Ukrainian officers stated on Friday.

“The enemy is intentionally destroying our cities and cities,” the regional army governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko stated on Telegram. “Civilians not concerned within the safety and operation of vital infrastructure of the area ought to evacuate.”

However by the Russian authorities’s design, the Russian public would know little of these losses, the devastation brought on by Russian missile strikes or the waves of males despatched into frontal assaults by Russian commanders. Because the battle started, the Kremlin has steadily dismantled Russia’s unbiased media, forcing organizations that had survived a long time underneath Mr. Putin overseas, and reducing off entry to Fb, the BBC and different information sources.

On Thursday, the Russian Prosecutor Basic’s Workplace designated Meduza, a well-liked unbiased information website, an “undesirable group,” which means that those that communicate to its workers, “like” its content material and even share its articles may danger prison prosecution.

The positioning’s actions “pose a risk to the foundations of the constitutional order and the safety of the Russian Federation,” the Prosecutor Basic’s Workplace stated in a press release.

The choice might limit the flexibility of Meduza journalists, primarily based in Latvia, to talk to folks inside Russia who now have motive to concern retribution. However the journalists insisted they have been undeterred, saying in a assertion: “We’ll discover methods to function in these new situations. We’ll proceed to report occasions to our readers, thousands and thousands of whom are nonetheless in Russia.”

The European Union condemned the choice, calling it “yet one more severe politically motivated assault on media freedom.” It additionally denounced the transfer by a Moscow Metropolis authority to terminate the rental agreements of the Sakharov Heart, a museum devoted to the historical past of Soviet abuses.

The 2 instances, the E.U. diplomatic service stated in a assertion, marked “a darkish day for the Russian civil society and a brand new low level within the Kremlin’s bulldozing of rights and freedoms of the Russian residents.”

But these have been simply two of a number of actions in that vein by Russian authorities this week. A Moscow Metropolis Courtroom ordered the closure of the Moscow Helsinki Group, one of many nation’s oldest human rights teams, in a choice that was condemned by the U.N. human rights workplace. The ruling “is yet one more blow to human rights and civic area within the nation,” stated Marta Hurtado, a spokeswoman for the workplace.

As well as, a prison case was opened in opposition to Pyotr Verzilov, the writer of the unbiased website Mediazona, he stated on Thursday, including that he stood accused of “spreading falsehoods concerning the Russian Military.” Mr. Verzilov, who left Russia earlier than the battle, stated the costs stemmed from his posts about Bucha, Ukraine, the place journalists and investigators discovered proof of atrocities by Russian forces.

And Roskomnadzor, the Russian web regulator, restricted entry to the web sites of the C.I.A. and F.B.I., based on the state information company Tass, which stated that no motive for blocking the websites was given.

Within the absence of unbiased information organizations, many Russians depend on tv, the place in style channels are owned both by the state or by businessmen on good phrases with the Kremlin, and all promote Mr. Putin’s authorities and his battle. Emails leaked from Russia’s largest state-owned media firm final 12 months confirmed that, at occasions, Russia’s army and first safety service, the F.S.B., directed and suggested state media workers on portraying the invasion in a constructive gentle.

Correspondents, anchors and TV hosts have for months repeated Mr. Putin’s claims that an goal of the invasion was the “denazification” of Ukraine. Mr. Putin has falsely asserted that Ukraine’s management is dominated by “neo-Nazi” officers — despite the fact that Ukraine’s democratically elected president is Jewish — and has lengthy referred to Ukraine’s 2014 revolution as a fascist coup.

In remarks to acknowledge Remembrance Day, Mr. Putin stated that “forgetting the teachings of historical past results in the repeat of horrible tragedies” after which linked the historical past of the Holocaust to the battle in Ukraine. He accused “neo-Nazis in Ukraine” of crimes in opposition to civilians and of “ethnic cleaning,” and stated that Russian troopers have been there to struggle “particularly this evil.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, in his personal Remembrance Day message, additionally invoked the horrors of the Holocaust in reference to the battle, though he didn’t immediately handle Russia or Mr. Putin.

“At present we bear in mind the willpower of the worldwide coalition that stopped Nazism,” Mr. Zelensky stated, “and in the present day we repeat it much more strongly than earlier than: by no means once more to hatred, by no means once more to indifference.”

Different Ukrainian authorities officers have been extra direct. Andriy Yermak, a high adviser to the president, stated that the tragedy of the Holocaust “ought to have served as a warning to forestall new crimes in opposition to humanity.”

“However in the present day, within the very middle of Europe, a genocide of Ukrainians is going on,” he wrote on Twitter. “We’ll neither forgive nor neglect something.”

Ivan Nechepurenko, Cassandra Vinograd, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Carly Olson, and Matthew Mpoke Bigg contributed reporting.