Vladimir Putin is running a system under which any time anybody presents any possible alternative to his rule, he eliminates those people.
For example, a very popular young politician-activist-blogger named Alexei Navalny started to complain about government corruption and exposed huge government corruption in his country. This young man ended up becoming so popular that he had the potential, if there were a real democratic process, to become president of Russia.
What Putin did was to trump up a number of absolutely objectively ludicrous criminal charges against him, prosecute him on the basis of charges that anybody would say were completely unjust, and then convict him. When he was convicted, 10,000 people went onto the streets of Moscow and protested, and Putin realized that if he actually put him in jail, that could potentially cause an uprising. He was then put under house arrest and refused any access to any technology, so he's effectively neutered.
There's another fellow named Udaltsov, who is a member of the opposition. Again, he was convicted of various crimes and put under house arrest.
This is what they do. They don't register your party, or they convict you of a crime, or they attack you and in some cases murder you, to make sure that nobody wants to become a member of the opposition in Russia.
Putin is like an athlete who's cheating. He can't tolerate any competition, so he eliminates anybody who might potentially be his competition. He's now also eliminating any possible journalists' organization that says anything bad about him. Any journalists' organization that has been in any way supportive of the opposition is now being shut down in Russia.