Russian Media Watchdog to Limit Access to Facebook

Earlier, social media suspended Ria Novosti's account for 90 days citing alleged spreading of "misinformation". The suspension came as Ria was reporting on the events around the Russian military's special operation aimed at protecting the Donbass republics and denazification of Ukraine.

Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor has announced that it will be partially limiting access to Facebook in response to its censorship of Russian media outlets. The watchdog did not specify what limits will be imposed on the platform.

"On 25 February, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office, in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry, chose to recognise the social network Facebook as involved in the violation of fundamental human rights and freedoms, as well as the rights and freedoms of the Russian citizens", Roskomnadzor said in a statement.

The watchdog revealed that it had detected 23 cases of censorship in the social media network since October 2020. For months Facebook and its parent company, Meta, have been ignoring Roskomnadzor's demands to remove restrictions from the materials published by several Russian media outlets, including TV channel Zvezda, Ria Novosti, Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru. The watchdog called the social media platform's behaviour as acts of "censorship".

Facebook suspended Ria Novosti's page on 24 February as it was reporting on the process of the Russian military's special operation ordered by President Vladimir Putin. Facebook pages of Zvezda, Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru were also blocked. The platform has since resumed the pages' functioning.

The operation was launched by the Russian president in response to requests from the Donetsk and Lugansk People's republics (DPR and LPR) and with the goal of demilitarising and denazifying Ukraine. Putin argued that Russia was left with no other choice after the Donbass republics had been shelled for more than a week by Ukrainian forces.