Russia’s Justice Ministry has added the demobilisation campaign group The Way Home and former presidential hopeful Yekaterina Duntsova to its register of so-called “foreign agents”, it said in a statement on Friday evening.
Announcing the first update to the register in almost two months, the ministry said that the organisations and individuals added to the list had “spread false information aimed at creating a negative image of the Russian Federation and its army”.
In a unusually frank rebuff published on its Telegram channel, The Way Home, which campaigns for the demobilisation of men drafted to fight in Ukraine, told Russia’s Justice Ministry to “fuck off” and denied that it had ever “been funded by anyone”.
“The [government’s] absurdity is gaining momentum, but we have no intention of stopping. Our loved ones are still in mortal danger, under the rule of Russian ‘patriots’ and friends of the state,” the group said.
Duntsova, a journalist and local councillor from the city of Rzhev in Russia’s western Tver region, burst onto the national stage in November when she announced her intention to run in March’s presidential election on an anti-war platform.
Yekaterina Duntsova. Photo: Yekateria Duntsova
However, Russia’s Central Election Commission barred her from running in December, citing “mistakes” in her candidacy application. A month later, she was briefly detained by police after a meeting at which she announced her intention to form a new anti-war political party, Dawn.
Duntsova said that adding her to the “foreign agents” list was the “government’s way of dealing with an inconvenient politician”, but that the label would not prevent her and her associates from “building the Dawn party” and would not affect its members “in any way”.
Individuals and organisations deemed “foreign agents” by the Russian government are obliged to identify themselves as such in all social media posts and other publications, and are also subject to stringent financial requirements. In May, Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill banning “foreign agents” from running for office at any level.
