On 13 October 2023, the Russian Justice Ministry designated journalists Sergey Kovalchenko and Ayder Muzhdabayev as “foreign agents”. They were handed the designation on various charges including denouncing Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Additionally, Muzhdabayev was recently sentenced in absentia to six years of prison, on terrorism-related charges.
Kovalchenko is an independent journalist and former host of radio programs on Echo of Moscow, a Russian radio station which was disbanded following the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Kovalchenko left Russia following the invasion. Muzhdabayev was a long-time correspondent at Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets. He left the newspaper and Russia in 2015, in protest against the annexation of Crimea. He has since obtained Ukrainian citizenship and lives in Kyiv.
Initially adopted in 2012, Russia’s law on foreign agents has been revised several times over the past decade to include an ever-wider range of potential targets for state-sponsored discrimination. Currently, any organization, media or private individual can be designated as such simply by being declared to be “under foreign influence” by the Russian Ministry of Justice or because of receiving funds of any amount from abroad (or from an entity itself receiving foreign funds). “Foreign agents” are also barred from receiving state financing, teaching at state universities, working with minors and providing expertise on environmental issues, among other restrictions.