A participant in human rights missions in Chechnya has been declared a foreign agent.

The Russian Ministry of Justice has added human rights activist Stanislav Dmitrievsky*, who has worked in the Chechen armed conflict zone since 1995, to the register of foreign agents.

As reported by the Caucasian Knot, Stanislav Dmitrievsky* is a human rights activist, a participant in legal projects and field missions in armed conflict zones, including Chechnya, project manager at the Natalia Estemirova Documentation Center, and the former head of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (RCFS). In February 2006, he was found guilty of extremism and sentenced to a two-year suspended sentence for publishing appeals from Aslan Maskhadov and Akhmed Zakayev in the newspaper "Pravozashchita" in the spring of 2004. In the fall of 2017, the European Court of Human Rights ordered Russia to pay Dmitrievsky* 13,600 euros for this conviction.

The Russian Ministry of Justice updated its register of foreign agents today, adding Stanislav Dmitrievsky*, a human rights activist from Nizhny Novgorod who now lives in Georgia.

According to the ministry, Dmitrievsky* participated in the creation and dissemination of materials by other foreign agents, as well as organizations deemed undesirable in Russia. He also "interacts" with one of these organizations, the Ministry of Justice noted.

The decision to include him in the registry is also based on the fact that Dmitrievsky* opposed military action on Ukrainian territory. Furthermore, he "disseminated false information about decisions made by Russian public authorities and the policies they pursued," according to a statement on the ministry's website.

Dmitrievsky* himself has not yet commented on the new status assigned to him by the Russian Ministry of Justice – as of 6:55 PM Moscow time today, there are no posts dedicated to this decision on the human rights activist's active social media page.

Stanislav Dmitrievsky first went to Chechnya as part of a field mission in January 1995, shortly after the start of the First Chechen War. "I remember well this intuitive feeling that something very important was happening there, that the fate of the country was being decided," the human rights activist recalled.

On January 16, 1995, Dmitrievsky and a colleague traveled by ambulance from Ingushetia to Chechnya, where they were detained by Chechen militias. They spent two days in a Chechen village, and then several days in Grozny, journalist Mikhail Fishman* wrote in his book about Boris Nemtsov.

“I was shocked. We found ourselves in the thick of it. It was like a 3D film about Stalingrad. On the first day, it felt like that. On the second day, it became scary,” he quotes Dmitrievsky*.

The "Caucasian Knot" also published reference materials "The First Chechen War (1994-1996): A Brief Overview of the Main Events" and "How the First Chechen War Ended: Memory and Chronicle".

* are included in the Russian register of foreign agents.

** The activities of Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) are banned in Russia.