The Russian government can now consider journalists, bloggers and users of foreign social networks as agents of other governments

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law that gives the government the right to consider journalists, bloggers and users of foreign social networks as agents of other governments. The law integrates a previous 2017 law that allowed foreign journalists to do the same thing, and that was introduced after the US government declared television RT, financed by the Russian government, a foreign agent. The new law can concern anyone who spreads content produced by media considered to be foreign agents and receives payments from abroad, provides for the possibility of monitoring suspects in a particular way. The law has received extensive criticism in Russia, and has been accused of being a further limitation of freedom of expression and of the press.