Russia’s Ministry of Justice has updated its “foreign agents” register, adding sociologist and ExtremeScan founder Elena Koneva as well as the outlet Ekho, which was created abroad by former journalists of the Echo of Moscow radio station.
The updated list also includes the anarchist media project Avtonomnoye Deystviye and the public movement Crimean Solidarity.
According to the ministry, the newly designated entities had distributed materials produced by other “foreign agents,” published what the authorities describe as “false” information about government policy, and spoken out against the Russian-Ukrainian war.
More than 1,200 people and organizations have now been placed on Russia’s “foreign agents” register. At the same time, the ministry itself recently acknowledged that in 2025, foreign funding was identified in only 4% of the cases involving people and organizations given this designation.
Before 2022, the presence of foreign funding was a mandatory condition for being added to the register. The rules were later changed, broadening the grounds for designation.
According to the rights project OVD-Info, the register grew by 178 individuals and 37 organizations in 2025. By the project’s count, 80% of the new “foreign agent” designations were tied to opposition to the war or support for Ukraine.