; (5) cracking down on thousands of civilians who in November 2022 peacefully protested the regime’s draconian zero-Covid policy in cities throughout the country, in the largest protests to convulse China since the prodemocracy Tiananmen Square protests in 1989; and (6) suppressing dissent through a sovereign Internet model and exporting technology to enhance the ability of like-minded authoritarian regimes to exert control online and monitor the activity of their people; Whereas the Russian Federation continues its full assault against all independent media actors both inside Russia and abroad, a situation that has drastically worsened since the start of the war of aggression against Ukraine, including by— (1) passing draconian legislation that criminalizes any public opposition to or independent news reporting about the unprovoked war against Ukraine, and imprisoning journalists including foreign correspondents for their reporting, including— (A) the arrest in March 2023 of Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter and United States citizen, on baseless, politically motivated espionage charges, the first time an American journalist has been detained in Russia since the Cold War, and for which the Department of State on April 10, 2023, deemed Gershkovich to be wrongfully detained by Russia; (B) Ivan Safronov, a correspondent with Russian business dailies Kommersant and Vedomosti, who was sentenced to 22 years in jail on treason charges in September 2022; (C) Maria Ponomarenko, a correspondent with the RusNews independent news website, who was sentenced to 6 years in prison for spreading false information about the Russian military in February 2023; (D) Sergey Mikhaylov, publisher of the independent newspaper Listok, who was arrested and charged for spreading false information about the Russian military in April 2022; and (E) Mikhail Afanasyev, editor-in-chief of the online magazine Novy Fokus, who was arrested and charged with spreading false information about the Russian military in April 2022