Their complete list will be published from December 1, with personal information, such as their address or social security number.
by Benoît Vitkine (Moscow, correspondent)
From the 1 er December, the Russian Ministry of Justice will publish on its website the complete list of “agents from abroad” identified by the authorities. This publication could be a clarification work, as this list has continued to swell, in recent months, to finish by counting some 250 names, physical or legal personalities all criticism of Russian power.
has a detail: the list will contain all the personal data of “agents abroad”, from tax and social security numbers to the addresses of the persons concerned. According to its own regulations, the administration usually considers such information as confidential.
This status which was originally only an infamous becomes more and more threatening. The official media regularly present agents from abroad, whether journalists, lawyers or environmental activists, such as “traitors”. Since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, people considered opposed to the Russian intervention have seen their doors have tagged or have been the subject of assaults, such as the editor of the newspaper Novaïa Gazeta, Dmitri Mourato. Police brutalities have also multiplied against people daring to protest – until the rape that a Moscow poet would have suffered in a police station.
“Let us stop finishing, especially in period of special military operation, commented the former president Dmitri Medvedev. The activities of foreign agents must be strictly controlled, including by the company.”
The first law dates from 2012 2>
The first law on foreigners dates from 2012, adopted to protect the country from harmful foreign influences – understand “Western”. Over the amendments, it has transformed into a tool for the political control and suffocation of civil society and the media, targeted as a priority. The Memorial organization, Nobel Peace Prize 2022, was dissolved on the pretext of violations of this law. The first natural persons were appointed at the end of 2020, in this case the former Soviet dissident Lev Ponomarev.
The “agents abroad” must report on their participation in any public event and present the details, every three months, all of their expenses and their income. A decree adopted on November 10 also prohibits them from carrying out educational activities or working with the State. The authorities have also gradually widened the criteria selected. Originally, it was a question of tracking down supposed foreign funding, which did not prevent manipulations. In several cases, people have been registered on this list after having received, without knowing it, some rubles coming from mysterious foreign nationals.
Several texts have gradually simplified things, removing the financial dimension. Since June 14 can be considered as an agent of the foreigner any person who conducts a activity directly or indirectly political and “who benefits from foreign support or is under foreign influence”.