The law on "foreign agents" will include a category of "third parties", this was stated by the Deputy Minister of Justice of Russia Oleg Sviridenko, speaking at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum.
According to him, the new provision “will apply to any third parties who are not foreign agents, they are not even affiliated with foreign agents, but they, as third parties, can exert certain influence willy-nilly and help foreign agents violate the 255th law <on control over activities persons under foreign influence>”.
“We hope that the Ministry of Justice will have this tool, and we will maybe have some channels that will show well-known foreign agents, maybe someone will violate traditional values, warn for a while, after which a fine will follow.”
Earlier, Sviridenko said in an interview with TASS that foreign funding is not the only basis on which a person or organization can be included in the list of "foreign agents." “There are other, no less effective ways for foreign stakeholders to support their “agents of influence”: providing methodological and organizational assistance, media platforms, “promotion” in the information space, technical equipment, and much more,” the official explained. According to him, all this is taken into account in the new law on “foreign agents”, which entered into force in December 2022.
