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Russian legislator warns Moscow’s tit-for-tat moves against US may put NGOs in crosshairs

The US Department of Justice earlier said that the US branch of Russia’s RT television channel should register as a foreign agent by November 13

MOSCOW, November 10. /TASS/. Moscow’s tit-for-tat moves in response to the demand by the US Department of Justice, which said that Russia’s RT network should register as a foreign agent, will imply, in particular, amendments to the law on NGOs, Speaker of Russia’s State Duma (lower house of parliament) Vyacheslav Volodin said at its plenary meeting on Friday.

"We asked the committee on non-governmental organizations to join this work, considering that the issue at hand is introducing some amendments to the law on foreign agents, on the status of regulatory NGOs and considering that this law did not apply to the media here," he said. "We asked [the committee’s chairman] Sergey Gavrilov to take part in this work."

On Friday, Volodin asked the State Duma relevant committees to come up with the potential proportionate tit-for-tat moves in response to the actions by the US Department of Justice.

The US Department of Justice earlier said that the US branch of Russia’s RT television channel, RT America, should register as a foreign agent by November 13. RT Managing Director Alexey Nikolov said a meeting of the Provisional Commission of Russia’s Federation Council (upper house of parliament) on Information Policy and Media Interaction that the TV channel had not registered as a foreign agent.

Later on, RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said the TV network had to agree to register as a foreign agent, since otherwise the company will not be able to work in the US, as its bank accounts can be frozen, and its head could face arrest.