‘A fair solution in this delicate sphere’: State Duma creates committee for depriving ‘foreign agents’ and dissident artists of Russian income

Russia’s State Duma has tasked a special committee with developing a proposal on how to deprive antiwar Russian artists and people designated as “foreign agents” of their income in Russia. Deputy speaker of the Duma Petr Tolstoy announced this on his Telegram channel.

The group’s aim is to draft a legal framework for depriving artists and public figures who adopted an antiwar position and left the country of any livelihood earned in Russia. The same goal applies to the country’s “foreign agents.”

Tolstoy says he’s joined an already existing work group aimed at “finding a fair solution in this subtle and delicate sphere.” The State Duma, he points out, is receiving some “fairly radical proposals,” since “it’s wrong to make money in the country you hate.”

The committee is headed by Irina Yarovaya, a State Duma deputy speaker.

In recent months, deputies repeatedly suggested stripping public figures who left Russia since the start of the Ukraine war of all state funding and royalties, as well as advertising and copyright-related income in Russia.