The Ministry of Justice sent nine notifications to publications and radio stations about possible recognition by foreign agents

The Russian Ministry of Justice confirmed that nine media outlets were notified of the possibility of being included in the list of foreign agents. This is reported on the department's website.

Notifications were sent to the Voice of America company, the projects “Caucasus.Realii”, “Crimea.Realii”, “Siberia.Realii”, the regional project “Idel.Realii”, the TV channel “Current Time”, “Radio Free Europe”/ Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), the Tatar-Bashkir service of Radio Liberty (Azatliq Radiosi), the Factographer project.

On November 15, the State Duma finally adopted a bill introducing the concept of “mass media as a foreign agent” into legislation. The amendments will come into force in the near future.

Foreign media declared as foreign agents will be required to conduct an annual audit, as well as every six months - to provide a report on their activities and personnel, and every quarter - a report on the receipt and expenditure of funds. At the same time, foreign media - foreign agents are not required to label their products with the foreign agent label, since such requirements are not established by law.

The Russian law on the status of foreign agents for the media began to be discussed in the State Duma in response to the forced registration of RT (Russia Today) in the United States. In October, the editor-in-chief of the RT television channel, Margarita Simonyan, announced that the United States was demanding that RT recognize itself as a foreign agent by October 17. After this, Simonyan said that Russia would take “reciprocal measures” and restrictions on the work of American media in Russia were possible.