Press Release, 8.06.2026

Picture: 4% — the share of “foreign agents” in whose case the Justice Ministry found evidence of foreign funding in 2025

Last week, Deputy Justice Minister Oleg Sviridenko staged what can only be described as an act of self-exposure. He acknowledged that foreign funding was far from the principal reason for which people were entered in the foreign agents register.

“If that were the sole criterion today, it would account for just 4% of foreign agents. Can you imagine? We would be searching with Rosfinmonitoring for money that simply isn’t there. And money isn’t needed — there are other forms now,” Sviridenko said, speaking at a session of the Federation Council Commission for the Protection of State Sovereignty.

Sviridenko’s words sit in direct contradiction with those of Vladimir Putin, who at a meeting of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights in December 2025 stated plainly: “For us, the one thing that matters is this: show us the sources of funding. What is so terrible about that?”

None of the 12 Yabloko members classified as foreign agents have received any foreign funding. Yet not one of them has succeeded in proving in court that their inclusion in the repressive register was unjustified. Lev Shlosberg and Boris Vishnevsky took their cases all the way to the Constitutional Court, which declined even to consider their complaints.

To have someone declared a foreign agent today, Alexander Shishlov, Coordinator of the Yabloko Political Committee and former deputy of the St Petersburg Legislative Assembly, reminds us that “foreign influence” alone is sufficient:

“What the Justice Ministry understands by ‘foreign influence’ includes, for example, giving interviews to foreign media, even though heads of state, ministers, State Duma deputies, and other public officials give identical interviews without any consequences. The Ministry further declares that the continued availability of old interviews given by ‘foreign agents’ on foreign media websites constitutes an ongoing manifestation of alleged ‘foreign influence’. The Yabloko faction in the St.Petersburg Legislative Assembly has repeatedly put forward proposals to amend the foreign agent legislation, including the de facto disenfranchisement of foreign agents, but the parliamentary majority has refused even to place them on the agenda for a plenary session.”

The Justice Ministry’s admission about the four per cent figure once again confirms Yabloko’s position: the current foreign agent legislation must be abolished, Alexander Shishlov emphasises.