The Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation declared director Vitaly Mansky, politician Lev Shlosberg, economist Sergei Aleksashenko, journalists Svetlana Prokopeva and Yulia Paramonova, the Vesma information portal and the Free Yakutia Foundation as “foreign agents”.
On June 15, the Ministry of Justice published a report from which it follows that as of December 31, 2022, there were 861 people in the closed register of persons “affiliated” with foreign agents. The names of these people are not disclosed in the document. The report states that most of them were related to "activities during the preparation and conduct of the elections."
In total, in 2022, the Ministry of Justice recognized 188 people and legal entities as "foreign agents" – a 42.6% increase compared to the same indicator for 2021, the report says. The agency explains the increase in the number of "foreign agents" by the increased number of negative publications about the Russian authorities and "events" in Ukraine.
In May, Russian Deputy Minister of Justice Oleg Sviridenko, speaking at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum, said that the law on "foreign agents" would include a category of "third parties." 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 exercise certain influence willy-nilly and help foreign agents violate the 255th law <on control over activities persons under foreign influence>”. Lawyer Ivan Pavlov, in a conversation with The Insider, explained that the goal of the new bill is to make “foreign agents” not shake hands.