Blacklisted as a ‘foreign agent,’ foundation that supports independent Russian media will shut down

The Sreda Foundation, which supports Russian media, has announced plans to shut down. A source from Sreda told the news agency Interfax that the decision to close was made after the Ministry of Justice ruled to include the foundation in its “foreign-agents” registry.

The Sreda Foundation is headed by Boris Zimin, the son of Dmitry Zimin, whose nonprofit Dynasty Foundation was also included in the “foreign-agents” list earlier this year. Dmitry Zimin shut down his Dynasty Foundation in July.

“The foundation’s board has made the decision to close the NGO Sreda,” said a source from the foundation.

The Sreda Foundation was established in 2014 by Boris Zimin with the aim of supporting media projects that promote objective, high quality reporting. In the past, the foundation has allocated grants to independent TV channels Dozhd and TV-2 (an independent station based in Tomsk, in Siberia, which was taken off the air earlier this year), the website Colta.ru (which covers news, culture, and the arts), and Mediazona (which was founded by Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina to cover the criminal justice system).

On July 28, it was reported that the Ministry of Justice ruled to include the Sreda Foundation in its list of “foreign agents.” This is a list of organizations that conduct “political activities” in Russia using foreign funding. Organizations that make the list are subjected to debilitating levels of bureaucratic scrutiny and must label their work as the product of “foreign agents,” which can harm their reputations.