Vladimir Putin urged an end to crackdown on Russian journalists | Russia

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Russia’s leading independent media has appealed to Vladimir Putin and other top government officials to stop a crackdown on journalists in which some of the country’s major media outlets have been declared foreign agents or outright banned over the past year.

More than a dozen media outlets, including Meduza, TV Rain and Novaya Gazeta, signed an open letter to the government demanding that it remove individual journalists and their outlets from their blacklists and completely repeal laws on “foreign agents” and “undesirable organizations.”

“We are convinced that these events are part of a coordinated campaign to destroy the independent Russian media, whose entire ‘guilt’ is formed by honestly fulfilling their professional duties to their readers,” the letter reads. “We demand that this campaign stop now.”

Major outlets and individual journalists have been declared foreign agents under the 2017 Russian law requiring them to place a disclaimer on any content they produce and report on their funding. They argue that it is a death sentence for independent media because it frightens advertisers, potential sources, and reporting partners.

The list includes prominent media outlets such as US-funded Radio Free Europe, Riga-based Medusa, Bellingcat partner The Insider, TV Rain, investigative website iStories, and regional publications among others, including prominent human rights activists.

Some outlets said they were forced to close because the foreign agent’s advertisement destroyed their business models. VTimes, a publication staffed mainly by former Vedomosti journalists who left that newspaper during a censorship row, ceased publication earlier this year after it was announced that it was a foreign agent.

Others were immediately banned. The investigative news outlet Proekt was declared a persona non grata earlier this year in what was widely seen as retaliation for a series of massive investigations into senior government officials and businessmen with links to Putin.

The organization also published an investigation that allegedly recognized the young woman of Putin’s daughter, who was allegedly born to the mistress of the Russian president.

Despite the open letter, it does not appear likely that the government will halt its crackdown on the media. A senior BBC reporter is expected to leave the country by the end of the month due to her visa not being extended, suggesting that foreign media could also come under greater pressure in a scenario similar to that in China.

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