Russian Law Would Place Tougher Restrictions on Nonprofits MOSCOW - In another clampdown on dissent, Russian lawmakers approved a bill on Friday that would impose tougher registration and reporting requirements on nongovernmental organizations that receive financing from foreign governments or other donors abroad. The law, which was approved by the Duma, the lower house of Parliament and was expected to receive final approval rapidly, was sharply criticized by human rights and other advocacy organizations that said it could be used to intimidate government critics and to impede progress toward democracy. Some said the law might even block humanitarian aid. Organizations receiving money or other aid from outside Russia would have to register with the justice minister as "acting as a foreign agent" - a politically pejorative label that some independent groups said they would work hard to avoid. "This is blackmail by the government," said Grigory A. Melkonyants, the deputy director of Golos, Russia's only independent election-monitoring organization. The group, which played a crucial role in helping to identify fraud in the December 2011 parliamentary elections, has long received financial support from the United States. He said Golos would seek an exemption by trying to prove in court that it does not engage in political activity. If that fails, he said, the group will consider becoming a business, to avoid the "foreign agent" classification. "There is no other option for us," Mr. Melkonyants said. But several prominent organizations, including the Moscow-Helsinki Group, a venerable defender of human rights, said they would have to curtail fund-raising. The groups have also complained that the government does not do enough to support nonprofit groups, making foreign assistance crucial. Since Vladimir V. Putin's inauguration for a third term as president just over two months ago, the Duma has approved laws that sharply increase penalties for participants and organizers of unsanctioned political protests and grant the government new powers to restrict "harmful" Internet content. The Duma on Friday also increased the penalties for libel and slander - a bill that Mr. Putin expressed personal interest in seeing approved. It, too, was expected to move quickly through the upper house and be signed into law. While the bill on nongovernmental groups was approved overwhelmingly, 374 to 3, other measures have been pushed through by United Russia, the party that endorsed Mr. Putin for president, using its shrunken majority in the Duma. Critics said the government's efforts to clamp down on dissent would only hurt Russia's reputation and hamper its development as a democracy. Lyudmila M. Alexeyeva, a Soviet-era dissident who leads the Moscow-Helsinki Group, called the "foreign agent" law "despicable" and said she would dismiss staff members and stop raising money before being thus branded. Boris Kashin, a member of Parliament from the Communist Party, said the proposed libel law, which would allow penalties of more than $150,000, was not worthy of a first-world country. "The fate of a banana republic awaits us - you won't shut the mouths of the people in the current situation," Mr. Kashin said. You are doing absolutely nothing to ensure that the country develops as it should. In a sign of Russia's heightened political sensitivity to outside criticism, the Foreign Ministry posted a statement on its Web site on Friday describing comments by American officials about the legislation on Internet content and nongovernmental groups as "interference." In December, Mr. Putin accused Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of sending "a signal" to the Russian political opposition, prompting tens of thousands of people to join street rallies against his government. "Without going into details of the U.S. position, we state that such approaches cannot be perceived other than as attempts of absolutely inappropriate and gross interference in activities of Russian government bodies and a sovereign lawmaking process which is proceeding strictly in compliance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation," a Foreign Ministry official, Konstantin Dolgov, said in the statement. In an interview on Friday, Valentina Matviyenko, the speaker of Parliament's upper chamber and an ally of Mr. Putin, sharply criticized the Russian political opposition. "I would like the public to finally hear what exactly the protesters want, because we only hear "Down with all and everything" and "All are thieves, all are corrupt," " Ms. Matviyenko told the Interfax news agency. "A rally for the sake of a rally - this is hopeless," she said. The absolute majority of people will not follow such slogans. She added that she expected the political protest movement to "fade away." The human rights group Memorial, said in a blog post that the Duma had become "hysterical" and that the government was rushing through legislative changes as if it faced an imminent threat. "After the passage of the judicially illiterate and extremely dangerous political changes to the legislation on demonstrations," Memorial said in its statement, "the State Duma has helter-skelter brought changes to the law on nongovernmental organizations. The speed with which this is being done is striking. One might think that the enemy is already at the gates of the capital and only changes to this law will save the fatherland.