In March 2015 amendments to the law on non-governmental organizations, which make it possible to exclude NGOs from the register of \u201cforeign agents\u201d and which were long sought by moderate critics of the law on NGOs, finally came into force. Under the new regulations, an NGO can get rid of the stigma of a \u201cforeign agent\u201d after refusing to get foreign funding, not receiving it for a year and in case it is not involved in political activities. In this case, an NGO can submit an application to the Ministry of Justice, while the latter will have to \u201cpromptly request prosecutors to conduct unscheduled inspection of a non-profit organization\u201d. Based on the results of this inspection, an NGO may be excluded from the register of \u201cforeign agents\u201d. Or else, it may not be excluded. So far, all the attempts by NGOs to get excluded from this register ended with no positive result. Neither the rulings of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, as was the case with \u201cGolos\u201d NGO, nor the refusal of foreign funding, as was the case of \u201cSoldiers’ Mothers of Saint Petersburg\u201d, were of any help.<\/p>\n
Recently yet another absurd way to harass undesirable NGOs was put into practice: a notorious Saint Petersburg human rights organization \u201cCivil Control\u201d, which was forcibly listed<\/a> in the register of \u201cforeign agents\u201d by the Ministry of Justice (although earlier inspections had found no violations of the law on NGOs on its part), started to get fines for not listing itself voluntarily in the register of \u201cforeign agents\u201d. Thus, a new ridiculous hybrid of the two versions of the law on \u201cNGOs fulfilling functions of foreign agents\u201d came to life: initially NGOs had to get listed in the infamous register voluntarily, and those who did not do this by themselves were punished, but later – when it became clear that no one will list itself there on its own good will, – both the law and legal practice were changed. The Russian Ministry of Justice started to list human rights NGOs in its register