The Ministry of Justice updated the register of foreign agent media on September 29. 22 people and 2 organizations has been included into it. The data is published on the agency's website. The OVD-Info* Media Project has been included in the register of unregistered non-governmental associations labeled as foreign agents.
Those whom the agency has declared media functioning as foreign agents include Sergei Smirnov* and Pyotr Verzilov*, the Mediazona Website's editor-in-chief and publisher, Sofya Ivanova* and Vladimir Zhilinsky*, election observers of the regional branches of the Golos (‘voice, vote’) Non-Governmental Organization, Artyom Vazhenkov* and Vladimir Zhilkin*, candidates for deputies in the last State Duma elections, and others. The Zona Prava* (‘zone of law’) Human Rights Organization has also been included in the list.
The Ministry of Justice has included the OVD-Info Media Project*, providing legal and informational support to detainees at public actions, as well as the Ivanovo Center of Gender Studies* and the Nizhny Novgorod Center for German and European Culture* in the register of unregistered non-governmental associations labeled as foreign agents.
OVD-Info* considers what happened to be an act of political pressure that occurred in the midst of a large public campaign for the abolition of laws on foreign agents launched by OVD-Info* and more than 150 media outlets, non-governmental and charitable organizations.
The journalists have created a petition demanding the repeal of the law on "foreign agents" on the Change.org Website. As of September 29, more than 130 thousand people have already signed it. The journalists of 229 media outlets have left their signatures against this law.
