Svetlana Gannushkina, mathematician and human rights activist in Russia, as well as political scientist Andrei Kolesnikov, former editor-in-chief of the newspaper ‘Novaya Gazeta’, have been included this Friday in the list of “foreign agents” in Russia.
The law on foreign agents was adopted in Russia in 2012 and makes it possible to recognize as a “foreign agent” any non-profit organization that has received money from abroad and is carrying out, from the point of view of the authorities, political activities. The regulations were extended in 2019 to the media and journalists.
The Russian Ministry of Justice has also reported that, in addition to Gannushkina, who was a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, and is a member of the NGO Memorial, founded in 1989, more people and entities have been included.
Specifically, journalists Anastasia Zhvik and Gleb Pianikh, as well as four organizations –among which are a feminist and another to support the LGBT community– have been added to the list, as reported by the Interfax news agency.
Human Right Watch (HRW) called in December for the repeal of the Russian law, since it is an “attack on freedom of expression” and the Russian authorities use it to “defame and punish independent voices,” according to the deputy director for Europe and Central Asia of the NGO, Rachel Denber.
A new reform to the law was approved in July 2022, although it entered into force on December 1. With this, Moscow has expanded the definition of a foreign agent, which allows sanctioning those who participate in civic activism or who express political opinions “under foreign influence.”
