MOSCOW, September 7. /TASS/. Russian governmental commission on legislative activities has sent for revision the amendments to the law on "foreign agents" non-governmental organizations (NGOs), State Duma’s First Deputy Speaker Alexander Zhukov told journalists on Monday.

The Kommersant newspaper reported earlier that the commission will discuss the draft law on toughening legal control of activities of "foreign agents". The main point of the draft law is that Russian legal entities will be obliged to inform non-governmental organizations about receiving financing from foreign sources.

"Another important decision I would like to draw your attention to is the draft law ‘On introducing amendments to Russia’s separate legislative acts on improving legal control of activities of NGOs performing activities of a foreign agent’. Today, these amendments are being discussed in the media," Zhukov said. "A decision was made to send the draft law for revision and to consider it in full in the future, in accordance with the presidential order after the plenary session in the Civic Chamber [from 26 June 2015]," he added.

The deputy speaker reminded that Putin ordered to analyze the practice of implementing Russia’s legislature concerning activities of non-governmental organizations and develop measures for additional legal control over activities of socially oriented NGOs and those non-commercial organizations the activity of which is aimed at reaching socially useful aims.

Law on "foreign agents"

The law on NGOs acting as foreign agents was adopted in the summer of 2012. It obliged all organizations involved in political activities and funded from other countries to declare themselves foreign agents in a special register and to mention this status in all of their publications in the Internet and the mass media.

According to the Justice Ministry on January 1, 2013 there were 219,688 non-commercial organizations in Russia (105,000 public organizations, 25,000 religious ones, 87,000 others, 54 political parties and 2,100 their offices, 14 branches of international organizations and foreign non-governmental organizations).

According to July statistics available from the head of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights Mikhail Fedotov, there are 77 titles on the foreign agents list.