New Russian Law Threatens Space Journalists With Foreign Agent Designation

The disclaimer runs as follows: “This Report (Material) has been created or distributed by Foreign Mass Media Channels executing the functions of a Foreign Agent, and/or a Russian legal entity executing the functions of a Foreign Agent.” Of course, it should be obvious to anyone with even a little knowledge of Putin’s and his United Russia Party’s crackdown on dissent in recent years that this isn’t intended to shield Russian citizens from foreign disinformation but to warn off anyone from publishing embarrassing information.

According to the Guardian, other topics covered by the new law include military procurements; information on military morale, troop movements, or service history; investigations into allegations of abuse by security forces or the military; and many elements of defense policy and weapons development.

Russia’s military and space programs have seen major scandals in recent years and this kind of law could come in handy to suppress any future embarrassment. For example, Dmitry Rogozin, the notoriously combative head of Roscosmos, and his agency have been mired in scandal in recent years. The space program has faced claims of widespread fraud and corruption, such as graft during the construction of the Vostochny cosmodrome, which Russian authorities have estimated resulted in the loss of 11 billion rubles out of 91 billion allocated to the project. Rogozin lives suspiciously large even for a government official with a salary of roughly $460,000, Ars Technica noted, while some Roscosmos facilities can’t afford their trash bills. Several of the space corporation’s projects have suffered major technical problems in the past few years, including a space station module that erroneously fired its thrusters and a Soyuz rocket booster failure that triggered an emergency crew return to Earth.