The Ministry of Justice recognized the legal entity Foreign Agent AAV, registered by the editor-in-chief of Ekho Moskvy Alexei Venediktov, as a media outlet as a “foreign agent” in order to comply with the legislation on “foreign agents”.

Earlier, Venediktov said that he was recognized as a "foreign agent", since he received wages at the radio station, which were considered "indirect foreign funding", and dividends from the Diletant magazine.

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. 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.