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The Ministry of Justice has expanded its list of “foreign agents,” adding one organisation and four individuals. The agency announced this on its official website.

The following have been added to the “foreign agent” register:

  • Mark Solonin—a publicist and historian, who runs a YouTube channel under his own name;
  • Igor Rudnikov—editor of the Kaliningrad newspaper Novye Kolesa and a former regional assembly member. In June 2022, he was declared wanted by the police;
  • Ioann Kurmoyarov—a cleric who previously belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church. He spoke out against the war in Ukraine, for which he was sentenced to three years in prison for “spreading military fakes.” After being released, he emigrated to France;
  • Mark Krotov—journalist at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty;
  • “Revolt Centre”—a cultural space in Syktyvkar, a city in northern Russia, which opened in 2019 and is named after Soviet dissident Revolt Pimenov. The space held exhibitions, lectures and public discussions, including on protest-related themes. In 2022, the centre displayed a “No to war!” banner in its windows.

    At the beginning of July, a criminal case for “high treason” was opened against the founder of the Revolt Centre, Pavel Andreev. As part of this case, mass searches took place in several regions. The space itself was also raided and subsequently sealed off by FSB officers.

According to the Ministry of Justice, those included in the “foreign agent” register spread false information about decisions made by authorities in Russia and made negative comments about the Russian army and its actions. The ministry believes that these individuals, as well as the “Revolt Centre,” participated in distributing materials from other “foreign agents.”

The company “Philosophy of Non-violence”, which had been founded by public figures including Andrey Makarevich and Mikhail Benyash, was also removed from the register. The organisation was dissolved by the Federal Tax Service in 2024.

16 August After the Revolt Centre in Syktyvkar was designated as a “foreign agent,” it announced its closure. The official statement was published by the organisation’s former director, Darya Ananyeva.

“17 people were recognised as participants of a foreign agent. Welcome to the hell,” she wrote.

In addition to Ananyeva, the following were also designated as “foreign agent” participants: co-founders Pavel Andreev and Leonid Zilberg, executive director Darya Chernysheva, historian Igor Sazhin, and 12 more staff members, as noted by “7×7.”

At the beginning of July, the Revolt Centre was searched as part of the case against Pavel Andreev. He faces a high treason case (Article 275 of the Criminal Code). Executive director Darya Chernysheva was given restrictions on certain activities in an investigation into “evasion of foreign agent obligations” (Article 330.1 of the Criminal Code), due to being listed in the Ministry of Justice’s register as a participant in the outlet “7×7.” The outlet was added to the “foreign agent” list in 2023, although Chernysheva had stopped working with it a year earlier.

Following the July searches at the Revolt Centre, during which officers also seized staff members’ devices, the space suspended its activities and announced a fundraising campaign to buy equipment and pay staff. Local Z-activists smashed doors at the centre and covered them, along with walls and windows, with Z-symbols.