Moscow uses “foreign agent” status to harass and persecute its opponents
Russia’s recent designation of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, a prominent member of the feminist protest group Pussy Riot, as a “foreign agent” highlights the broad scope of the ambiguously defined label – and its effectiveness as a tool against criticism of President Vladimir Putin.
“The government can tag their asses if they want to!” This is the reaction of Tolokonnikova, a founding member of the protest rock group Pussy Riot, to the decision of President Vladimir Putin’s government on December 30 to label her as a “foreign agent.”
Besides Tolokonnikova, four other people – including famous Russian satirical writer Victor Shenderovich and art collector and columnist Marat Gelman – were also added to the list by the Russian Justice Ministry.
None of the other new “foreign agents” responded with the same sense of provocation as Tolokonnikova, a 32-year-old activist who had already been sentenced to prison in 2012 for her participation in an anti-Putin show at the Duomo. Christ in Moscow. Saviour.
On social networks, she posted a photo of herself showing the middle finger and promising not to comply with the official duties of “foreign agents”.
The Pussy Riot have said they will appeal to the courts and disregard the labeling rules for social media posts.
“Stigmatizing label”
Anyone who qualifies as a “foreign agent” must register and provide details of all their activities and finances every six months. Their posts, including all social media posts, must begin with a long, official message confirming their “foreign agent” status.
Tolokonnikova’s sharp response may give the impression that this status can be dismissed lightly, but it is far from the case. “It is a very stigmatizing label. In Russia, it is equated with the status of” enemy of the people “under Stalin,” explains Elena Volochine, TSWT correspondent in Russia.
Andrei Zakharov, a Russian journalist, went into self-exile on December 27, saying in a video that he could no longer bear the pressure of “unprecedented surveillance” he had been subjected to since he had been designated “foreign agent” last October.
This status can have very concrete consequences for people on the Russian Ministry of Justice’s list. In December, the Russian Supreme Court ordered the disbandment of Memorial, one of Russia’s most active and long-standing human rights groups. Memorial was initially added to the blacklist in 2016 for receiving international funding. The court based its decision on what they called “repeated violations” of the obligations of “foreign agents”. In his argument, the prosecutor accused the group of creating a false image of the country as a “terrorist” state.
Harass and muzzle opponents
The term “foreign agent” carries a Soviet-era tint in Russia, suggesting Cold War espionage. The law was passed in 2012 to flag overseas-funded nonprofits, but was expanded in 2017 to include independent media and individuals. This update to the law came in retaliation to state-backed broadcaster Russia Today who was asked to register as a foreign agent in the United States.
Two years later, Moscow broadened its definition of etiquette when it ruled that individual journalists – not just organizations – could also be considered “foreign agents”. Since December 2020, activists with ties to overseas funding sources have also been trapped.
Moscow initially justified the adoption of the law as a mere Russian version of a similar settlement in the United States. “This law does not prevent anything. It is not binding and only serves to improve the transparency of public life in Russia,” Putin said at the time.
For some time the Russian government was careful not to be too harsh in this area. But “from 2014 and the annexation of Crimea, Moscow really started to use this law a lot more often,” Voloshin said. Putin’s opponents quickly realized that the status of “foreign agent” would be used as a tool to harass and muzzle them.
The Kremlin has been careful not to define precisely what constitutes a “financial link with a foreign country”. “The vagueness and breadth of the wording of the law and regulatory standards lead to many ambiguities that the Ministry of Justice does not clarify,” notes OVD-Info, a Russian media also referred to as a “foreign agent”, in a report. November 2021 report.
Simple acts like participating in a press trip organized by a foreign entity, receiving gifts from friends living abroad or winning a prize in an international competition expose individuals to the label, OVD-Info noted.
Since September 2021, a financial link with a foreign country does not even seem necessary. The FSB, Russia’s domestic intelligence service, released a document that includes some 60 military-related topics that can give a journalist the status of a foreign agent if he or she works on any of the topics listed. These include corruption in the military, the development of new weapons or problems with morale among the troops.
In this context, it is not surprising that the list of “foreign agents” has grown from less than 20 organizations and individuals in 2019 to more than 110 by the end of 2021. For some, the number of designated “foreign agents” is a measure of the intensity of the witch-hunt against opponents of Putin. “The more repression there is, the more names are added to the list,” Voloshin summed up.
Having your name on the list “is very restrictive from a logistical and operational point of view,” Volochine explained. Individuals must report quarterly to detail their activities, revealing how much money they received from abroad and how it was spent.
“I no longer have any privacy because the Department of Justice knows absolutely everything about me, down to the brand of stamps I use. I have to fill out 84 pages of forms every three months to justify all my expenses.” , said journalist Lyudmila. Savitskaya, who found herself on the list of “foreign agents” at the end of 2020.
Entering “a minefield”
Another requirement for these people is that they must specify in all their publications – books, newspapers, business cards, social media posts – that they are “foreign agents”. Failure to do so can result in a fine, jail time, or closure, in the case of NGOs such as Memorial or the media.
“One of the discriminatory consequences of the law is, for example, the inability of ‘foreign agents’ to use Twitter,” writes OVD-Info. The maximum length of a Tweet is 380 characters, but the length of the official “foreign agent” tag is 220 characters. This leaves only 60 characters for the message.
“This law is a weapon that is all the more effective in that it can be used retroactively,” said Mark Galeotti, an expert on security issues in Russia, in an interview with TSWT. From the point of view of the government, the interest main of this law, it is “that it weakens the interested parties”, he noted.
“Once you are on the list you become vulnerable to other types of attacks, including legal ones, because there are so many new obligations that you have to follow,” he said.
In other words, when you are designated a “foreign agent,” you step into “a minefield,” said Dmitry Treshchanin, editor of the list’s news site Mediazona, during a roundtable on the scope. of this status broadcast on YouTube in November 2021.
According to Treshchanin, the key to his power is his ambiguity. “We don’t understand the law and the justice minister doesn’t understand how to apply it,” Treshchanin said. “In fact, no one, even its creators, has a clue of how it should work. And that’s actually at the heart of the law itself, it’s been written in such a way that it can be interpreted any way.
This article was translated from the original in French.
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