For the first time, the Ministry of Justice included five people in the list of media agents. Among them is human rights activist Lev Ponomarev

The Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation has added to the register of foreign media outlets performing the functions of a foreign agent. It included five people, the press service of the Ministry of Justice reports . This is the first time something like this has happened—before this, only publications were added to the register.

The list includes:

• Daria Apakhonchich , activist from St. Petersburg;
• Denis Kamalyagin , editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Pskov Province”;
• Lev Ponomarev , human rights activist;
• Sergey Markelov, journalist of “7x7”;
• Lyudmila Savitskaya, journalist for Radio Liberty.

Now there are 17 items on the list of foreign media performing the functions of foreign agents.

The law recognizing individuals as foreign agents was adopted at the end of 2019. Foreign agents can be recognized as citizens who distribute materials from foreign media or participate in their creation, as well as if they receive money or property from abroad or from Russian legal entities financed from foreign sources.

Updated at 5:37 p.m. Daria Apakhonchich told Taki Dela that she does not know why she was included in the register of foreign media - foreign agents. According to her, she did not receive letters about inclusion in the registry because she did not check her mail. “I’m already discussing this with my lawyer, but I don’t even know roughly what this means for me yet,” Apahoncic said.

The human rights group "Agora" took Lyudmila Savitskaya under protection. “Our lawyer will represent her interests in the complaint about being included in the register,” wrote the head of Agora, Pavel Chikov.

Updated at 5:50 p.m. Denis Kamalyagin intends to challenge the decision of the Ministry of Justice to include him in the register of foreign media agents.

“I wrote materials for Sever.Realii a couple of times during the year, even before the adoption of the law on foreign agents-individuals. So they transferred me a fee a couple of times, this was in the spring. I no longer see any reason [to be included in the registry]. It turns out that they took the data before the law was signed and based on this data they added me to this list,” he told MBKh Media .