OVD-Info
OVD-Info () is an independent Russian human rights media project aimed at combating political persecution. Its main focus is freedom of assembly. OVD-Info is one of Russia’s largest human rights NGOs. History OVD-Info was founded in December 2011 by Moscow journalist Grigory Okhotin and programmer Daniil Beilinson. They witnessed mass arrests of participants in the pro-democracy rally on December 5, 2011. Okhotin and Beilinson then posted the total number of detainees and their names on Facebook. The post went viral, and seeing the demand for their work, by December 10, on the eve of the rally on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, Okhotin and Beilinson launched the OVD-Info website. The name of the project comes from the abbreviation Department of Internal Affairs (), which is how police departments are often called in Russia. OVD-Info therefore means “information about the police”. Since 1 February 2013, the main partner of the project is the Nobel-winning Memorial Human Rights Center. In 2013, the demanded that Memorial register as a foreign agent, since it receives funding from abroad to support OVD-Info, which was regarded by the prosecutor's office as partisan. According to the prosecutor's office, some of OVD-Info's data on political persecutions is not objective.