The state media holding RT (Russia Today) is trying to obtain a legal monopoly on the Russian term for "foreign agent." The television network trademarked "inostranny agent" in 2020, and late this spring it moved to patent its shortened form, "inoagent." In October, RT's lawyers sent a claim letter to a small brand that put the words "innostranny agent" on a t-shirt. The Moscow-based Feelosophy Store had launched a line merch in support of Meduza -- and it's just one of many small companies that have brought out foreign-agent themed products to express support for NGOs and media outlets blacklisted under this label. If Russian courts side with RT, only the state-run television network will be able to sell t-shirts, keychains, stickers, and other products featuring this term. That said, some lawyers believe that RT's intellectual property rights could be disputed. To find out more, Meduza takes a deep dive into RT's quest to privatize this repressive "brand" created by the Russian state.

Earlier this week, the Russian military fired a missile into outer space and blew up a Soviet "Tselina-D class" satellite that had been orbiting the Earth since 1982. The U.S. government says the weapons test created a large debris cloud that endangers the crew aboard the International Space Station, calling Moscow's behavior "dangerous and irresponsible," which predictably led the Russian Defense Ministry to deny Washington's allegations and accuse the United States of "hypocrisy," given past debris-generating anti-satellite weapons tests by India, China, and America. Meduza summarizes what we know about this week's orbital event and how dangerous it really is.

Police in Kazakhstan have freed a Russian national from modern-day slavery, the local news outlets New Times and Tengrinews reported this week. Police officers tracked the man down in the Shet district of the Karaganda region in central Kazakhstan, after they came across a video of him pleading for help from his family. The man in the video, who identified himself as Alexey Kotov, went missing over 20 years ago after he was assaulted at a train station. Kotov's family members, who live in Russia's Yaroslavl region, told the local human rights commissioner that they believed Alexey was alive and made attempts to find him, but never reached out to Russian law enforcement agencies for help.

A Moscow court handed down six fines totaling 132,000 rubles ($1,820) to Novaya Gazeta and its editor-in-chief, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov, for allegedly failing to disclose the status of "foreign agents" mentioned in the newspaper's articles.

Russia's censorship agency (Roskomnadzor) has appealed to a Moscow court to block the investigative outlet The Insider over its failure to include "foreign agent" disclaimers on its website, reports state news agency TASS.

Lawmakers from the faction A Just Russia -- For Truth submitted a bill to the State Duma that would amend Russia's "foreign agent" legislation such that this status would only be handed down by a court ruling.

The Russian Attorney General's Office submitted a request to the State Duma to remove the parliamentary immunity of Valery Rashkin, a veteran lawmaker from the Communist Party (KPRF).

The police raided the offices of two administrators at Moscow's Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration on Wednesday, searching the workspaces of financial director Alexander Efremov and Vice President Vladimir Fedotov.

Lawsuits by the Russian Attorney General's Office now threaten the continued existence of Memorial --both the international historical society and the human rights center. The former is accused of violating Russia's laws on "foreign agents" (for failing to disclose this status to readers), and the latter faces additional charges of "justifying terrorism and extremism" (because the group has declared supposed Islamic radicals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and left-wing nationalists to be political prisoners). The authorities' case is an attempt to smash the most crucial human rights organization left in Russia --a group of activists and scholars who have spent decades working to preserve the memory of the Soviet Union's most brutal political repressions. Meduza presents excerpts of statements from several prominent groups and individuals in support of Memorial.

Russia's oldest human rights organization, Memorial International, is under threat. Last week, prosecutors filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court seeking to shut down Memorial over "systematic violations" of Russia's legislation on "foreign agents." One of Memorial's greatest projects is a database of victims of the USSR's political terror, a resource that has connected countless people with information about their relatives lost to the purges. In their own words, the descents of Soviet terror victims recount how Memorial helped them uncover their family histories, and share their thoughts on the authorities going after the rights group.