On 29 October 2022, the annual congress of the Russian Union of Journalists (RUJ) voted to changed the organization’s statute, making it possible to exclude members designated as “foreign agents” by the Russian Justice Ministry. In a comment to TASS, RUJ president Vladimir Solovyev said that “nobody would be excluded automatically”, and that potential decisions would be taken by the Union’s secretariat on an indivdual basis. Solovyev added that the changes were needed as the RUJ could itself be designated a “foreign agent” if it received membership fees from journalists with this status.
In September, a Moscow court disbanded the independent Russian Union of Journalists, an organization created by media workers who considered the official RUJ to lack independence from the government.