Russian blogger fined for posting 'foreign agent' disclaimer in too-small font

Russian blogger Andrey Alekseyev has been fined 10,000 rubles ($155) for posting the “foreign agent” disclaimer required by the authorities in too small a font.

Alekseyev has been on the Russian authorities’ “foreign agents” registry since 2021. According to the newspaper Kommersant, his local prosecutor’s office contacted the district court to report a social media post he made in early May.

According to Russia’s “foreign agents” law, everyone included on the registry must include a lengthy disclaimer on media they create or share, and the size of the disclaimer’s text must be twice the size of the main text. To fulfill this requirement in his social media post, Alekseyev posted the “foreign agent” disclaimer in all caps, but according to an analysis conducted by a Russian Interior Ministry forensic center, the letters were still technically less than twice the size of Alexeyev’s main text.

Alekseyev’s fine makes the first time a “foreign agent” has been prosecuted for posting the disclaimer in too small a font size, Pavel Chikov, head of the legal advocacy organization Agora, told Kommersant.

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