It’s also further evidence of Russia’s determination to root out what it sees as Western liberal values, coming in the same week Russia’s parliament sent a bill expanding a ban on what it calls “propaganda” of LGBT issues to Putin’s desk.That law has been gradually updated since then, forming the backbone of an ever tighter stranglehold on civil society in Russia over the past decade.“Support” by foreign sources is defined not just as financial but “organizational and methodological, or scientific and technical help.” “Influence” can be read, according to the law, as “exacting an influence on an individual by coercion, persuasion or other means.”This is the point, says Konstantin Von Eggert, a freelance Russian journalist now living in Lithuania.Laws like this that make up what he calls “Putin’s repressive system” are designed to be broad and vague, and selectively applied so as to “scare and paralyze.”“Once the laws are applied across the board you might fairly quickly figure out how to game the system,” he said.In his speech on February 24th, the day the war started, Putin claimed the US and the West “sought to destroy our traditional values and force on us their false values that would erode us.”This week the speaker of Russia’s lower house, the State Duma, said a new law expanding a 2013 ban on “propaganda” of LGBT issues, pedophilia and gender reassignment to both minors and adults would “protect our children, the future of our country from the darkness spread by the United States and European states.” Human Rights Watch warned the law would have an “even more stifling effect on freedom of expression, well-being and security.”The expanded foreign agent law is now an even more powerful tool in Russia’s legislative tool box to bring its population in line with its goals."