Yulia Litnevskaya, a member of the Saratov Regional Duma (United Russia) and a candidate for the new parliament, on June 16 sent a request to the head of the regional prosecutor's office, Sergei Filipenko, and the leadership of two local media outlets, asking them to check Nikolai Lykov, editor-in-chief of the Vzglyad-info news agency, and a correspondent of the Svobodnye news agency. news” Anna Mukhina. The reason was their participation in seminars organized under the patronage of the British government. As Mukhina told The Insider, in Britain she improved her qualifications, and the deputy, according to her, is trying to achieve recognition of publications as "foreign agents."

Mukhina said that deputy Litnevskaya had previously worked as a journalist in the Saratov mayor's office in the public relations department. According to her, Litnevskaya “is advancing along the party line” and “calmly takes on all sorts of orders from above.”

“Two years ago I had a lot of posts on Facebook [about these trips], I have two albums with photos on VKontakte, I wrote material about trips. There were many people there, in general, until 2014, people went on trips abroad to exchange experiences, but then too. The publishing house did not send me to the seminar, it was my initiative, I took a vacation. I like to improve my skills, communicate with people, meet journalists from other countries, learn about other cultures and generally visit different countries. For me, people gather there and are an example of love for the Motherland, the desire to learn the history and causes of conflicts, so as not to repeat them, in order to resolve them in time. I don’t know what Russophobia is here, only, probably, that this happened in the UK.”

The journalist also said that the deputy included in the list for verification “publications that are in opposition to each other” [Vzglyad-info and Svobodnye Novosti]. At the same time, according to her, their publication has always been disliked, and now it "fell into disgrace of the State Duma deputy in charge of the region."

“We have an intra-clan political struggle here. In the denunciation, we are mentioned together with Nikolai Lykov, editor-in-chief of the Vzglyad-info news agency. We and Vzglyad Info are in opposition to each other, a long-standing enmity, and for some reason we ended up in the same boat. Because the attitude towards publishers is the same lately. We have recently been actively shoved there, because their publisher fell into disgrace of the State Duma deputy in charge of our region. Traditionally, we have always been disliked, and the employees of Vzglyad have been dragged for all sorts of interrogations and searches for the last year or two.

When asked what the deputy wants to achieve with her request, Mukhina replied: “Well, The Insider has a “foreign agent”, but we still don’t, this is what they are trying to achieve, in my opinion.”

In 2017, Russia adopted a law on the media-“foreign agents”. According to it, any media outlet that receives funding or property from abroad can be recognized as a “foreign agent”. In 2019, a new law was adopted, which made it possible to classify as "foreign agents" not only legal entities, but also individuals.

Since December 2020, individuals and unregistered public associations receiving funding from abroad can also be given this status for “political activity” in Russia, which de facto includes any public assessment of the activities of any state authorities. In addition, on March 1, 2021, penalties for violations of the activities of “foreign agents” were toughened: today they provide for both administrative fines and criminal liability for up to five years in prison.

Over the past years, hundreds of media, NGOs and individuals have been included in the registers of “foreign agents”. The first five people - human rights activist Lev Ponomarev, journalists Lyudmila Savitskaya, Sergey Markelov and Denis Kamalyagin, as well as civil activist Daria Apakhonchich - were included in the corresponding list on December 28, 2020. Later, this status was assigned to Meduza and the First Anti-Corruption Media. On May 14, VTimes was recognized as a “foreign agent” media outlet, the editors of which later decided to close the media outlet due to the new status.

In addition, after the outbreak of the war, Roskomnadzor demanded that the Russian media use only the wording “special operation” when covering the invasion of Ukraine. Since February 24, The Insider, Radio Liberty, Current Time, Krym.Realii, Voice of America, New Times, Taiga.info, DOXA, Ekho Moskvy, Dozhd have been blocked in Russia , Meduza, BBC Russian Service, Deutsche Welle and others. TV channel "Rain", radio "Echo of Moscow" and the Tomsk agency TV2 decided to stop working. In most cases, the block was initiated by the Russian Prosecutor General's Office.

Roskomnadzor also blocked the social networks Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And the court recognized the activities of the American corporation Meta as extremist and banned it in Russia.