There will be no repeal of the law on inagents

Official representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova statedthat the law on “foreign agents” will not be canceled in Russia.

According to Zakharova, “if it is canceled, the Western partners will have a complete sense of impunity both in the pressure on the Russian media abroad and in participation in political life through their agents of influence on the territory of our country.”

In his post, the Foreign Ministry spokesman compares the provisions of the laws on “foreign agents” in the United States and in Russia. “The FARA law passed in 1938 in the United States was intended to counter the attempts of Nazi Germany to influence political decisions taken by Washington, but it was never canceled with the end of World War II. Subsequently, it came in very handy already as a tool in the fight against foreign media, whose agenda contradicts the views of the local establishment. Russia was forced to adopt a law similar in meaning, but different in content, as a response to the announcement of the Russian media in the United States as foreign agents and the presentation of unreasonably strict requirements to them, ”she writes.

“Obtaining the status of a foreign agent in the United States can only be compared with the registration of a convicted recidivist with the police,” Zakharova notes.

According to Zakharova, the difference between these two laws is that “Russia has deliberately left the draconian measures used by the Americans.”

She also adds that “a detailed analysis of Russian and American legislation in this area was carried out by legal professionals from the Moscow State Law University named after O. E. Kutafin, to whom the staff of the State Department are like a star.”

September 14 journalists, human rights activists, environmentalists, doctors and charitable foundations created a petition on change.org demanding the repeal of the “foreign agents” law. It is addressed to the State Duma, the Federation Council and the Ombudsman.

Since the beginning of 2021, the Russian Ministry of Justice has entered 6 media outlets, 20 journalists and 7 NGOs into the register of so-called foreign agents. These organizations and people joined the list of 221 “foreign agents” that were forcibly entered by the Russian authorities into the relevant registers in 2013-2020.