By Lucy Papachristou
LONDON (Reuters) -Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, unanimously approved a bill on Tuesday that tightens restrictions on income received by those Moscow has designated as “foreign agents”.
Russian law requires any person or organisation receiving support from outside Russia or who Moscow says is under foreign influence to register as a “foreign agent”, a label that has negative Soviet-era connotations and brings onerous bureaucratic requirements.
The bill, which the Duma passed in the third and final reading, is Moscow’s latest step to root out suspected internal enemies during what President Vladimir Putin has cast as a proxy war in Ukraine between Russia and the West.
It requires “foreign agents” to transfer all income from the sale or rental of property and vehicles, as well as interest on deposits and dividends, to special rouble accounts.
They must also transfer any earnings from intellectual activity, including works of science, literature and art, performances, broadcasting, inventions and trademarks.
The individuals concerned will only regain access to those funds once they are removed from the Justice Ministry’s register of “foreign agents”.
The bill will now head to the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, and then to Putin for signing into law.
“The adopted law will prohibit scoundrels from enriching themselves at the expense of citizens and the country they have betrayed,” Vyacheslav Volodin, the Duma’s speaker, wrote on his Telegram channel on Tuesday.
A total of 895 individuals and organisations are listed as foreign agents by Russia’s Justice Ministry, including former billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Nobel Prize winner Dmitry Muratov and prominent YouTube blogger Yuri Dud.
CRACKDOWN
Some 209 people have had their names successfully removed from the list since Russia’s first law on foreign agents was passed in 2012, Justice Minister Konstantin Chuychenko told the TASS state news agency in September.
Russia has pursued a sweeping crackdown on dissent since it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, arresting over 20,000 people for speaking out against the war and pursuing criminal charges in more than 1,000 cases, according to human rights group OVD-Info.
Moscow says its law on foreign agents is necessary to protect Russia from foreign influence.
“As we have seen, the front today is not only along the line of military contact,” Vasily Piskarev, a senior lawmaker from the ruling United Russia party, told Duma deputies on Tuesday.
“We must continue to strengthen the security of our homeland…not only in the fight against the external but also the internal enemy.”
Many of Russia’s “foreign agents” now live abroad. They are barred from holding public office in Russia and running election campaigns, among other restrictions.
Critics of the “foreign agent” law say it unfairly targets those who speak out against the Kremlin and its policies.
A Russian former opposition politician who was labelled a “foreign agent” and still lives in the country said the bill was “another restrictive, prohibitive law against Russian citizens”.
The politician, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisal, told Reuters the law was unlikely to affect her, as she had little income and property. But said she had previously lost her job at a university due to the “foreign agent” restrictions.
The Duma’s speaker said in November that Russia was also working on legislation to tighten rules over the income of people who have left Russia and criticise the government.
(Reporting and writing by Lucy Papachristou; editing by Guy Faulconbridge, Gareth Jones and Christina Fincher)
