Russian singer Zemfira labelled ‘foreign agent’

The Russian Justice Ministry has put Russian singer Zemfira, ex-member of parliament Dmitry Gudkov, political scientist Abbas Gallyamov, Vladivostok activist Tatyana Namazbaeva, former Echo of Moscow reporter Sergey Aslanyan, analyst Sergey Shpilkin, head of the Violence.No centre Anna Rivina, and LGBTQ+ activist Alexandra Kazantseva on the foreign agent list, the agency said on its website.

Zemfira was targeted for openly supporting Ukraine, “performing in unfriendly countries with calls against the special military operation”, and received support from “foreign sources”.

The Justice Ministry believes that Gudkov urged to supply Ukraine with weapons, impose sanctions against Russia and also spoke as an expert and respondent at “information platforms provided by foreign structures”.

Gallyamov is believed to be spreading materials made by “foreign agents”, opposed the Ukraine war and also spoke as an expert and respondent at “information platforms provided by foreign structures”.

Namazbaeva was also accused of spreading “LGBT propaganda” apart from materials made by “foreign agents”.

Earlier, IStories and Süddeutsche Zeitung published a joint investigation based on a leak of emails from a subsidiary of Russia’s Internet watchdog. The reporters had a list of 804 names which the agency used to collect information to get people on the “foreign agent” list between 2020 and 2022. As of now, 139 names from the list are already labelled as foreign agents. Gudkov and Gallyamov were on the list as well.