The Ministry of Justice has once again added to the register of “foreign agents”.
This time the list included:
- Daria Heikinen is the former head of Nadezhdin’s headquarters in St. Petersburg and an activist;
- Ilya Shablinsky is a specialist in constitutional law and former lecturer at the National Research University Higher School of Economics;
- Farida Kurbangaleeva is a journalist who was arrested in absentia in a case involving military “fakes”;
- Konstantin Pakhaluk is a political scientist, columnist, and former deputy director of the Russian Military Historical Society;
- Dmitry Spirin is a musician, former vocalist of the band "Tarakany!";
- Alexander Shurshev is a politician and former head of the election campaign for Navalny’s headquarters in St. Petersburg.
Among the grounds for inclusion in the register, the department identified an anti-war position, distribution of materials from other “foreign agents,” and residence outside of Russia.
- The legislation on "foreign agents" is becoming stricter every year. On December 1, 2022, the Law "On Control over the Activities of Persons Under Foreign Influence" came into force, as well as numerous legislative amendments to the "foreign agent" regulation. You can read about who and on what grounds are recognized as "foreign agents", what restrictions these people and organizations face, as well as what risks those who interact with them bear in our report .
- In December 2022, Vladimir Putin also signed a law on imprisonment for up to five years for "foreign agents" who were held accountable twice in one year for violating the procedure for the activities of a "foreign agent" (Article 19.34 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). The total amount of fines imposed in 2022 and 2023 by Roskomnadzor on registry participants due to the lack of appropriate marking exceeded 1 billion 17 million rubles. In February 2023, a criminal case for evading the duties of a "foreign agent" (Article 330.1 of the Criminal Code) was opened against Artem Vazhenkov, coordinator of the Golos movement from Tver. In 2024, this article was also charged to the editor-in-chief of the publication "Pskovskaya Guberniya" Denis Kamalyagin , the former coordinator of the Pskov "Voice" Vladimir Zhilinsky , the former coordinator of the Kuzbass "Voice" Sergei Piskunov and the Circassian activist Martin Kochesoko .