The new bill draft called "On Control over the Activities of Persons Under Foreign Influence" will make it possible to declare new "foreign agents" even if they lack foreign funding, reported by RBK.
According to the bill, a foreign agent is a “person who received support and/or is under foreign influence in other forms and carries out political activities OR collects military-related information OR shares publicly available information OR creates such information.
Foreign support is not limited to financing only, this term now includes “organisational, methodological, scientific or technical assistance, as well general influence, including through coercion or persuasion." This is believed to be intended for all categories of “foreign agents”.
The bill was written by members of the State Duma Commission on “investigating the interference of foreign states into the internal affairs of Russia”. Andrey Lugovoy, Deputy Chairman of the Commission, said that the definition of "ways of coercion and persuasion" might become complemented in the second reading.
The bill is about to ban “foreign agents” from organising public events, conducting teaching and educational activities for minors, creating information products for minors and receiving financial support from the state.
Defiers of the new law will have their websites blocked by Roskomnadzor, the state censorship agency.
Columnist Alexander Nevzorov, Echo of Moscow’s former editor-in-chief Alexei Venediktov, sociologist Viktor Vakhstein, LGBT rights activist Yaroslav Sirotkin, journalists Sergei Parkhomenko and Vladimir Voronov, and Radio Liberty authors Artur Asafiev and Yekaterina Lushnikova were added to the “media foreign agents list” by the Russian Ministry of Justice on 22 April.
