Multiple RFE/RL websites, Russian sites of the BBC and Deutsche Welle, alongside Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Google’s app stores have been blocked in Russia to prevent Russian-speakers from getting access to outside information amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
According to web monitor group GlobalCheck and other indicators, the websites were blocked overnight on March 3-4.
It was unclear why the social media sites and app stores were targeted, although Moscow has had long-running disputes with many tech providers and platforms over disclosure and user-data issues.
The blocks began overnight on March 3-4 and follow a week of threats to RFE/RL and other media and forced closures amid ongoing coverage since President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s full-scale invasion of its post-Soviet neighbor.
Some of the sites sites were still available to Rostelecom subscribers, GlobalCheck said.
The blocks are preventing Russian access to the Russian Service of RFE/RL.
Journalists at the Latvian-based Russian- and English-language news outlet Meduza also said “everything looks like Meduza’s site is blocked in Russia,” adding, “These times will pass. We continue our work.”
The editorial offices of RFE/RL’s Russian Service received six notifications from Roskomnadzor late on March 2 in which the Russian media-monitoring agency threatened to block the service’s website amid ongoing coverage of the conflict in Ukraine.
The service reported that Roskomnadzor said it would use its powers to block news on Svoboda.org about the shelling of Kharkiv, in Ukraine, as well as the hacking of some Russian websites by cyberactors sympathetic to Ukraine and material about social media reactions to the hostilities.
The media regulator said the materials “delivered deliberately false socially significant information about Russia’s alleged attack on the territory of Ukraine” in ways that could “create panic among people.”
The U.S. State Department this week accused Moscow of mounting “a full assault on media freedom and the truth” as officials there seek to “mislead and suppress” information about the war.