The decision was issued on September 29, according to Mediazona, which reported that Frame had been added to the registry of "undesirable organizations" published on the Justice Ministry's website. No separate announcement was made.
The venue opened in Tbilisi in the spring of 2022, shortly after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It was founded by the authors of a project of the same name focused on informal education, who had moved from St. Petersburg. Its programming has included lectures, board game evenings, a school of investigative journalism and a summer tent camp called "Territory of Freedom".
In February, the Justice Ministry added Frame itself and its coordinator, Maxim Ivantsov, to the registry of "foreign agents". After that, representatives of the venue told Paper Kartuli that they would continue their work but would stop publishing photographs of participants and would remove some names from announcements. They said this was in response to requests from people fearing the consequences.
Alongside Frame, the Prosecutor General's Office designated as "undesirable" the German Moldova-Institut Leipzig at Leipzig University and the RAAM foundation (Raam op Rusland), which studies Russia, Ukraine and Belarus and works with Leiden University in the Netherlands. The Insider also mentions the Estonian foundation "Volna s Ukrainoy k pobede i protsvetaniyu" ("Wave with Ukraine to Victory and Prosperity"), founded by Andrei Volna, a doctor and member of the Russian platform at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. News of all the additions came not from Prosecutor General's Office press releases but from updates to the registry.
According to Radio Liberty, more than two hundred organizations are on Russia's "undesirable" registry, among them Radio Liberty, Stanford, Yale and the University of California, and numerous humanitarian projects. Participation in the activities of such an organization carries a fine of up to half a million rubles or forced labor for up to four years, with a repeat violation potentially leading to a criminal case.