The Moscow City Court recognized as legal the decision of the Ministry of Justice, which refused to reconsider the inclusion of historian and blogger Evgeny Ponasenkov (recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation) in the register of foreign agents. This was reported by RIA Novosti with reference to case materials.
In his lawsuit, the blogger demanded to recognize the ministry’s audit as unlawful and oblige it to conduct an unscheduled document review regarding the application to exclude him from the relevant register.
The Moscow City Court justified its decision by the fact that it did not receive a copy of the challenged decision and the inspection report did not indicate the circumstances and grounds for refusing to exclude foreign agencies from the register. The court also believes that the audit report was prepared incorrectly because it did not contain information about the audit results and did not refer to legal rules.
The Ministry of Justice stated that during the verification of the blogger’s materials, it identified facts regarding foreign influence, and therefore its removal from the list was refused.
The Moscow City Court accepted the ministry’s claims and rejected Ponasenkov’s complaint, and the decision entered into legal force.
This case was the historian’s second attempt to be removed from the register.
At the beginning of April 2022, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation involved Evgeny Ponasenkov. registry individuals-foreign agents; later, the company “First Scientific” created by the publisher was included in the list of media-foreign agents.
Transverse in advance statedHe said he was “deprived of citizenship” because of his activities on social networks.