The Ministry of Justice has included Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta and Nobel Prize winner, in the register of “foreign agents”.
The updated list also includes ex-deputy of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg Maxim Reznik, comedian Ruslan Bely, economist Konstantin Sonin, journalists Denis Kataev and Ksenia Larina (Oksana Barsheva), Chechen historian Mairbek Vachagaev, Voronezh oppositionist Yevgeny Karpov, writer Oleg Radzinsky and the anti-war movement “New Tyva”.
All of them, according to the Ministry of Justice, distributed materials of other “foreign agents”. Muratov, at the same time, was engaged in “forming a negative attitude towards the foreign and domestic policy of the Russian Federation”, using “foreign platforms”.
The agency claims that Bely opposed the war in Ukraine, and Larina “openly” supported the neighboring country. Reznik called for unauthorized actions, while Karpov and Novaya Tyva called for separatism, the Ministry of Justice said in a statement.
Muratov received the Nobel Prize in 2021 “for his efforts to protect freedom of speech, which creates the conditions for the existence of democracy and the maintenance of peace.” In the summer of 2022, he sold his Nobel medal at auction for $103.5 million, and donated the proceeds to support the humanitarian mission UNICEF.
In April 2022, the former St. Petersburg deputy Maxim Reznik was sentenced to a year in a colony-settlement in the case of possession of drugs (Part 1 of Article 228 of the Criminal Code). The court took into account the time that the politician spent under house arrest, so he was released from serving his sentence. The oppositionist himself connected the criminal case with a conflict with Governor Alexander Beglov and a desire to be re-elected to the Legislative Assembly. In September 2022, Reznik left Russia.
In March, a case of military “fakes” was opened against Konstantin Sonin, a professor at the University of Chicago (paragraph “d” of Part 2 of Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code). In May, the economist was put on the wanted list. The former coordinator of the Voronezh and Belgorod headquarters of Navalny, Yevgeny Karpov, became a defendant in the case of “discrediting” the army (280.3 of the Criminal Code) last winter.
