Whom did Vladimir Putin include in the new composition of the Human Rights Council (HRC) before meeting with its members?

Russian President Vladimir Putin, before the traditional meeting with members of the Human Rights Council (HRC), changed the composition of the organization. By decree of the head of state, six members were excluded from it, including lawyer Henry Reznik and journalist Leonid Nikitinsky at their request, as well as economist Yevgeny Yasin posthumously. Lawyer Mara Polyakova learned about the expulsion from the Human Rights Council from Kommersant. The renewed body included five social activists, including a fighter against the “dictat of a unipolar world” Alexander Ionov, after whose complaints against the publications The Bell and Meduza, the Ministry of Justice recognized them as foreign agents (later Meduza was recognized as an undesirable organization in the Russian Federation).

Changes in the composition of the HRC were formalized by Presidential Decree No. 691. Vladimir Putin removed six members from the council, including vice-president of the Moscow Bar Association Henry Reznik, Novaya Gazeta columnist Leonid Nikitinsky, lawyer Shota Gorgadze and the head of the Peacekeeping Mission. General Lebed” by Alexander Mukomolov. The former Minister of Economy of the Russian Federation and honorary scientific director of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Evgeniy Yasin, who died in September, was also excluded from the human rights body.

Mr. Nikitinsky announced his resignation from the HRC due to the “inconsistency of what is happening with human rights” back in March 2022, clarifying that he wrote a corresponding statement after the start of the HRC on the territory of Ukraine. Mr. Reznik stated that he left the HRC in December 2022, without explaining the reasons for the decision (but he also remained in its composition until now). Lawyer Mara Polyakova learned about the expulsion from the Human Rights Council from a Kommersant correspondent, refusing to comment on it.

The HRC included five new social activists, including historian Sergei Solovyov, head of the charitable foundation “Food Bank “Rus”” Yulia Nazarova, director of the NGO for social inclusion of disabled people “Space of Equal Opportunities” Igor Novikov and general director of the “Platform for working with appeals from entrepreneurs” Elina Sidorenko.

Among the newcomers to the HRC is the head of the Russian anti-globalization movement, Alexander Ionov.

This movement calls its goal to support countries and peoples “resisting the dictates of a unipolar world,” and its leader is known as the author of complaints against the publications The Bell and Meduza, after which they were recognized as foreign agents, and later Meduza as an undesirable organization in the Russian Federation. In April 2023, Mr. Ionov, along with two Russians, was accused by the US Department of Justice of spreading influence in the interests of the Russian government and the FSB. Authorities in the US state of Florida found that Russian citizens “recruited and financed” political groups in the United States and led them to “spread Russian propaganda.” Alexander Ionov, according to the US Department of Justice, in 2014-2022 participated in a campaign of “foreign malign influence” on the African People’s Socialist Party in Florida and the Black Hammer Party (known as the Black Hammers) in Georgia.

The head of the Human Rights Council, Valery Fadeev, linked the presidential decree with an “annual planned rotation.” “They were expelled for various reasons: some considered their task in the council completed, others lost all activity,” he told Kommersant. In November 2022, Vladimir Putin expelled journalists Nikolai Svanidze, Ivan Zasursky and Ekaterina Vinokurova from the Human Rights Council, as well as the founder of the “Committee against Torture” (recognized as a foreign agent) Igor Kalyapin. The HRC then included ten recruits, in particular the military correspondent of Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alexander Kots, and the deputy of the People’s Council of the DPR, Elena Shishkina.

Political scientist Alexei Makarkin says that among the new members of the HRC, only Mr. Ionov is “known for making political statements,” and “with a distinctly pro-government position.” In 2014, the social activist was an “Anti-Maidan activist”, a critic of the opposition, then “he called for various media outlets to be recognized as foreign agents, and after that they were recognized as such,” and also organized an “anti-American” conference in Moscow, Mr. Makarkin lists. Alexey Makarkin believes that based on the rotation of the composition of the HRC, “one can hardly speak of tectonic changes.” “There was a time when the council was a kind of representation of the opposition in power, but this is long gone into history. The second stage is a balance between supporters and opponents of the government; its residual phenomena was the membership of the same Henry Reznik. The third stage is people who work with the authorities,” says Mr. Makarkin.

Alexander Voronov, Emilia Gabdullina