A regiment of foreign agents has arrived. Shenderovich complains about the “change in landscape”
The Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation included 8 individuals in the register of media foreign agents. The most famous among them are writer Viktor Shenderovich, gallery owner Marat Gelman and members of the hooligan art group Pussy Riot Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Veronika Nikulshina.
The list was published on the ministry’s website, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“According to the information received, these individuals systematically distribute materials to an indefinite number of people, while receiving foreign funding,” the statement says.
The editor-in-chief of the Ekho Moskvy radio station, Alexey Venediktov, hastened to stand up for one of the newly minted foreign agents.
“Viktor Anatolyevich Shenderovich has been a regular guest of the “Minority Opinion” program for more than 13 years, regardless of his nationality, citizenship, height, weight, eye color and, now, a special status determined by the Russian Federation, in the form of a foreign agent. He will remain a regular guest of Echo as long as he wants it,” Venediktov wrote in his Telegram channel.
Shenderovich immediately appeared on the air of Echo of Moscow and said that he was being forced to leave the country, although the status of a foreign agent only provides for the appropriate labeling of materials in the media and social networks.
“It is clear that this is some kind of final chord. They force you out of the country, they force you to flee, they force you to hide from yourself. They may succeed in this, but the point is not in me in this case, but the point is that all this is absolutely the worst symptomatology, however, nothing new. I’m going to think, this is a very strong change in the landscape overall,” Shenderovich said.
Marat Gelman, who lives in Montenegro, admitted on the same broadcast that he was very surprised by the decision of the Ministry of Justice.
“This is, of course, strange. I’m not a media outlet, I’m not a journalist, I don’t express my opinion anywhere other than my own blog, and I’m not even a Russian tax resident, so this is strange for me. I take this as some kind of signal. I haven’t lived in Russia for a long time, 1,5 years ago I donated 200 works to the Tretyakov Gallery and kind of returned. From that moment on, I began to visit, do exhibitions, and speak out. Apparently, this is some kind of signal that “there’s no point in you coming back, we were so glad that you left,” he said.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova wrote on her Twitter that she does not plan to label publications on social networks as a foreign agent.
“I won’t label it. Let them mark their ass,” Tolokonnikova wrote.
“There is nothing politically motivated about this. There's no stigma to it. A law-abiding person does not see any tragedy in this. These people who are now complaining understand that they are foreign agents because they systematically took money from abroad. But this was pointed out to them, and they were offended. They just felt like they were in power here and determined the rules of the game. The state did not exist for them at all,” Evstafiev said on the Vesti FM radio station.
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