MOSCOW - When Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin on May 7 last year, Alexander Zamaryanov, head of a tiny non-profit group, was already expecting the screws to tighten after huge protests against the Russian strongman's 13-year rule.

What Zamaryanov did not expect was that his group - where he is the only permanent employee - would be labelled a "foreign agent", accused of trying to influence Russia's state policies and face the prospect of closure.

"This is absurd," Zamaryanov, the 22-year-old executive director of a NGO called the Kostroma Centre for the Support of Public Initiatives, told AFP.

"We were simply conducting roundtables. We never participated in any protests and rallies," he said from Kostroma, a town around 350 kilometres (217 miles) northeast of Moscow.

In February, his NGO, which accepts foreign and Russian grants, organised a roundtable about Moscow's troubled relations with Washington and invited a US diplomat to speak at it.

In April came the prosecutors, who searched the group's premises and oversaw the opening of two administrative probes into Zamaryanov's refusal to register as a "foreign agent" in line with legislation adopted upon Putin's return to the presidency.

The non-profit group now faces a fine of up to 500,000 rubles ($16,000) and Zamaryanov himself one of up to 300,000 rubles - fines that threaten the very existence of the NGO, Zamaryanov said.

For him, the main result of the first year of Putin's new mandate has been a campaign of repressions.