Russia has blocked an average of 4,900 websites per week so far in 2022, according to Roskomsvoboda, an internet freedom NGO. According to Roskomsvoboda’s report, published Monday by the Kommersant business daily, authorities restricted 14,800 websites last week alone — the highest total in a single week in several years. While it did not name potential …
640,000 websites are currently blocked in Russia, reports NGO Read More
Russia fined U.S. streaming platform Twitch on Tuesday for the second time this month over its refusal to remove an interview with an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, state media reported. A Moscow court said Twitch should pay 3 million rubles ($49,500) for the video with Oleksyi Arestovich, according to the TASS news agency. The …
Russia fines Twitch over Ukraine presidential adviser video Read More
Russian authorities have blocked or deleted some 138,000 websites since Moscow launched its invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February, the country’s prosecutor general said Monday. Following over 300 requests from prosecutors, Russia’s communications watchdog Roskomnadzor has censored thousands of websites in a bid to combat “fake news,” according to prosecutor general Igor Krasnov. “After the start of …
Russia has blocked 138,000 websites since Ukraine invasion, prosecutor says Read More
The former head of Russia’s top tech firm Yandex Tigran Khudaverdyan has challenged sanctions against him over the Ukraine war in a European Union court. Khudaverdyan filed a lawsuit on June 7 demanding the European Council lift its “discriminatory and disproportionate” sanctions against him. The lawsuit was first reported by TV channel RTVI on Monday evening. Khudaverdyan quit as Yandex executive …
A Russian court fined U.S. tech giants WhatsApp, Snapchat and Tinder on Thursday for refusing to store the personal data of Russian users inside the country, as stipulated by the demanding local legislation, U.S. company Meta, the owner of messaging service Whatsapp, was ordered by Moscow’s Tagansky District Court to pay 18 million rubles (nearly $300,000 at …
Russia fines Apple, Snapchat, Tinder, WhatsApp for data storage law violations Read More
On Monday Russia fined Google 21.1 billion rubles (some $263 million at the pre-war exchange rate, $360 million at the current rate) for repeatedly failing to remove prohibited content on its YouTube video platform. Censorship on the Russian Internet has been on the rise over the past few years, reaching totalitarian heights since the beginning …
A Moscow court on Thursday said it had fined Alphabet’s Google 15 million roubles ($260,000) for repeatedly failing to comply with a Russian law requiring technology companies to localise user data. Russia has issued multiple fines to foreign technology companies in recent years over a range of infringements, in what critics say is Moscow’s attempt …
Russian court fines Google $260,000 for breaching data rules Read More
Google Russia has moved the better part of its employees out of Russia, reports Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter. These Russian employees “continue to work for Google outside Russia, with a large number ending up in Dubai, where Google has a big office.” Those who opted to stay in Russia will …
Google Russia evacuates staff, prepares bankruptcy procedure Read More
Serge Faguet, a Ukraine-born tech entrepreneur who studied at Stanford and co-founded Russian booking service Ostrovok.ru in the early 2010s, made a public confession last week in a Medium post. In the summer of last year, a Russian customs agent at the Moscow airport found five tabs of acid — in addition to a US-physician-prescribed …
How a Ukrainian tech entrepreneur created a startup from a Russian prison Read More
Russia has arrested the alleged co-founder of dark web platform Hydra a week after U.S. and German authorities said they shut down what they called the world’s largest illegal darknet marketplace. German police said this month it took control of Hydra’s Germany-based servers and seized $25 million in bitcoin assets. The U.S. Justice named Dmitry Pavlov, 30, as the …
Russia arrests alleged co-founder of world’s largest darknet marketplace Read More
Meta’s properties — including Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp — are likely to cease their activities completely in Russia as the US social media company is now facing a criminal investigation over calls for violence targeting the Russian invaders of Ukraine. “A criminal case has been initiated (…) in connection with illegal calls for murder and …
This Thursday, a Russian military court handed down sentences for terrorism to three teenagers from the Siberian town of Kansk. The boys were arrested in the summer of 2020 for posting leaflets with political slogans on the local FSB building. After searching their phones and uncovering a “plot” to blow up a virtual rendering of …
