The Russian Ministry of Justice has added journalist, Graty co-founder Anton Naumliuk to the list of participants in the Crimean Solidarity movement, declaring him a “foreign agent”, Naumliuk reported in a Facebook post.
“The Russian Ministry of Justice has expanded the list of Crimean Solidarity participants assigned foreign agents status. Now the number of participants has grown to 137 and all of them are essentially declared foreign agents. All of us, because I’m also counted among them,” the journalist wrote.
He said that this move did not change much for him personally, because the had been facing pressure by Russian law enforcement bodies and regulators for years for his reporting on repression in Crimea.
Naumliuk said that he had been investigated back in 2016 on suspicion of “justifying terrorism” for his coverage of the persecution of Crimean Muslims. In 2021, Roskomnadzor tried to have a video taken down and Graty’s YouTube channel blocked due to a courtroom news report on the “second Bağçasaray Hizb ut-Tahrir Group”, and in June 2022, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Russia blocked the news outlet’s website.
“And in 2026, Crimean Solidarity is first declared a foreign agent, then the movement announces they are shutting down to somehow protect their members, and then I am included in their number. I see a certain consistency in all this, since 2016,” Naumliuk commented.
The journalist added that he had been considering ways to “make reporting on Crimea-related topics relevant and consistent again” in response to the actions by the occupation authorities.
As reported earlier, Russia has expanded the list of Crimean Solidarity “participants” to 137 people. On 26 June 2026, the movement announced they would cease operations after being included in the “foreign agents” list by the Russian Ministry of Justice.
The ministry claimed that Crimean Solidarity had “interacted with participants of international terrorist organisations” and cooperated “with the state authorities of Ukraine.”