Russia’s official investigation of the murder of human rights activist Natalya Estemirova is being carried out in a dishonest fashion, according to Presidential Council on the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights member Svetlana Gannushkina, RIA Novosti reports.

Gannushkina said that Russian law enforcement agencies are no longer considering the possibility that federal security forces had a hand in Estemirova’s killing.

“We have the feeling that investigators have stopped [investigating] the version that was originally being looked into, about the connection between high-ranking law enforcement representatives and the Chechen government and the murder, and the connection with Natasha’s professional work – that she exposed [Abusubyan] Albekov’s public [and extrajudicial – ed.] execution,” she explained.

The human rights activist noted that the version currently being considered to be the most likely scenario – that Chechen militant Alkhazur Bashaev is responsible for the murder – “doesn’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny.”

In addition, Gannushkina noted that an entire year has passed since Estemirova’s murder case has been last investigated.

Human rights advocates have long criticized the investigation of Estemirova’s murder in July 2009. Russia’s federal Investigative Committee has refuted their claims. On July 6, the activist’s colleagues presented Russian President Dmitri Medvedev with a report criticizing the investigation, and on July 14 promised to make the document public.

Natalya Estemirova, a member of the Chechen branch of the Memorial human rights center and expert counsel on Chechnya to Russia’s human rights ombudsmen, was kidnapped on the morning of July 15 near her home in Grozny. Her body, riddled with gunshot wounds to the chest and head, was discovered later that same day in an Ingush forest.

Colleagues and friends of the activist blame the Chechen government and President Ramzan Kadyrov personally for her death.

In 2009, Kadyrov sued Memorial head Oleg Orlov for slander in a civil case after the latter claimed the president was responsible for the killing. The court found him guilty in October 2009. However, a criminal case on the same charges filed by Kadyrov in July 2010 was turned down by a court just last month.

As Slavic Power leader Dmitry Demushkin told Kommersant, this unification of nationalist organizations became possible after the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) was banned. “After that we decided to unite all of Russia’s nationalist forces into a new movement, The Russians. At its core are the largest nationalist organizations – the DPNI and the Slavic Union,” explained Demushkin. At the very least, the new organization’s goal is to further general ethno-political Russian solidarity, and at the most – to establish a nationalist government heading a nationalist Russian state.

The DPNI was ruled extremist and subsequently banned by a Moscow court in April 2011. The Slavic Union was banned a year earlier, after which it changed its name to Slavic Power.

The structure of The Russians can be found on the DPNI’s website. In particular, it lists the names of the agencies of its administration, including: the Council of Nations (an all-Russian meeting to define strategies for the existence and activities of the organization), the High National Council (to correct strategy and ongoing activities and to confirm annual plans) and the National Observatory Council (to represent the interests of the organization and develop strategy). The first council will be chaired in turn by Aleksandr Belov, Aleksandr Turik, and Stanislav Vorobyov. The second council will be led by Demushkin, and the third by Belov.

The movement also named a number of other structures: the National Committee for Action, the National Committee for Control, and the High Court of Honor. This last one, Demushkin told Interfax, “is the movement’s highest judicial authority, led by Georgy Borovikov.”

As Demushkin explained to Kommersant, he and Belov will play a substantial role as authoritative figures for The Russians. “There’s no guarantee that the new movement won’t repeat the fate of the nationalist organizations that are already banned right now. But for this we purposely gave ourselves this awkward name. So the courts and law enforcement agencies would be banning not nationalists, but ‘Russians,'” Demushkin explained.

Human rights activist and head of the SOVA Center for Information and Analysis Aleksandr Verkhovsky told Kommersant that the emergence of a more radical sentiment among neo-Nazi organizations presents a blatant, prospectiveless dead-end for its followers. “The same thing’s going to happen as did to the DPNI,” Verkhovsky said. Svetlana Gannushkina, head of the committee Civil Assistance, sees the emergence of The Russians as a call for a change in constitutional order. “Actually, this is a disgrace for Russia,” she told Interfax.

Compiled from reports by Natalya Bashlykova and Dmitry Kozlov at Kommersant, and Interfax.

On Tuesday, Interfax reported that criminal charges of slander had been filed against the head of the Russian human rights organization Memorial, Oleg Orlov, by Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. The charges stem from comments by Orlov regarding connections between Kadyrov and last summer’s high-profile murder of Memorial activist Natalya Estemirova.

The Chechen president, who has been denounced by rights organizations worldwide for his alleged personal involvement in individual cases of murder, torture, and other rights abuses, won an earlier civil case against Orlov in which the Memorial director was forced to pay a fine. Kadyrov then promised to stop suing human rights activists after he was criticized by his mother for disrespecting his elders. With Tuesday’s announcement, that promise appears to have been broken. Radio Free Liberty/Radio Europe reports on the Russian federal government’s misunderstanding of human rights organizations:

Well-known Russian rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina says the federal government is ignorant about the operations of human rights groups in the North Caucasus, RFE/RL’s Russian Service reports.

Gannushkina, of the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Civic Assistance Committee, was reacting to reports that a Moscow court has charged Oleg Orlov, the head of the rights group Memorial, with defamation of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.

She told RFE/RL that “the dangerous part of human rights work comes from the local governments, not outside organizations.”

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in a meeting human rights activists on July 6 that he believes people need to be able “to send the government a signal” about the problems in the North Caucasus, often by going through NGOs.

But Putin warned that some NGOs in the North Caucasus are “supported by outside funds,” hinting that they are being financed by political organizations abroad.

Gannushkina said such an accusation is not new. She added that activists do not follow orders from anyone, though she admitted that most of the funding for NGOs comes from foreign and private companies.