The Russian authorities have not yet created a service through which «foreign agents» must submit reports to the Ministry of Justice. Presumably, such a service will appear only at the end of 2023. This was reported by Kommersant, citing a source in the department.
April 15, the deadline for submitting reports for the second half of 2022 for individuals and organizations recognized as «foreign agents» expired. At the same time, according to the amendments to the legislation on “foreign agents”, adopted at the end of 2022, the documents had to be uploaded to a special portal, which was never created by order of the Ministry of Justice. In particular, one of the report forms — OIA001 — must be uploaded to such a site without fail.
Novosibirsk journalist Pyotr Manyakhin, recognized as a «foreign agent», told Kommersant that he had sent a request to the Ministry of Justice for clarification on how act in the current situation. According to him, the department has not yet responded to him. At the same time, at the request of Kommersant, the Ministry of Justice said that before the service appeared, “foreign agents” could send paper documents by mail. The agency added that work is currently underway to create a platform for posting reports of «foreign agents», the service should start working in December 2023.
Manyakhin himself published a report on his social networks. “When publishing, I acted according to the old rules that were before December. I posted a report on social media. Just in case, I also posted the report on VKontakte, so that you don’t even need to use VPN services to access information, ”said the journalist. Director of the Media Rights Protection Center Galina Arapova also suggested that since the service is not yet ready, «foreign agents» can publish reports on the Internet, as before.