Russian Justice Ministry puts American JDN, Latvian IStories Fonds on list of undesirable organizations

MOSCOW. March 6 (Interfax) - The Russian Justice Ministry has put an American journalistic association and a Latvian foundation on the list of organizations undesirable in Russia, after the Prosecutor General's Office had earlier designated them as such.

The Justice Ministry on Saturday put the Journalism Development Network INC (JDN) from the United States and IStories Fonds from Latvia (designated as a foreign agent media outlet in Russia) on its list of undesirable organizations.

The Prosecutor General's Office concluded on February 22, 2022 that the activities of these entities were undesirable in Russia.

The website of JDN identifies it as a nonprofit journalistic organization supporting investigative journalism, based in Maryland, the U.S.

IStories Fonds (the legal entity of the publication Vazhniye Istorii, or Important Stories, designated as a foreign agent media outlet), an Internet publication also specializing in investigative journalism, was put on the Justice Ministry's list of foreign agent media outlets in August 2021. In addition, the ministry listed as foreign agent media outlets the journalists of Important Stories, i.e. Editor-in-Chief Roman Anin, Olesya Shmagun, Dmitry Velikovsky (all the three Pulitzer Prize winners), Roman Shleinov, Alesya Marokhovskaya, and Irina Dolinina.