Sputnik Czech Republic Website No Longer Accessible in the Country

Earlier, Sputnik Polska became unavailable to users in Poland, as over the weekend, multiple Sputniks, including Sputnik International, Sputnik German SNA, Sputnik Ceska Republika reported large-scale DDoS attacks amid Russia's ongoing special operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.

Sputnik website is no longer accessible in the Czech Republic. Instead, users could see signs that read, "we can't find this page" and "this site is unavailable."

This comes as on Monday, Sputnik Polska became unavailable to users in Poland.

Following the European Commission's recently-announced action against Russian state-backed media channels over developments in Ukraine, Instagram has restricted access to multiple accounts that belong to Sputnik News Agency, according to an e-mail distributed late on Monday by the platform.

"Because of an order from the government, court or other authority, access to your account has been restricted in this region," reads the message.

The service has been unavailable for Sputnik in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Czech Republic. Sputnik departments in Ukraine and Turkey were also sent such e-mails.

As part of the broad crackdown across social media platforms, the TikTok accounts of Russia-affiliated media resources, including RT and Sputnik, are also currently unavailable to users in the European Union, according to Sputnik correspondents in Spain and Germany reporting in the early hours of Tuesday, local time.

The developments came as on Sunday, when announcing that the EU will close its airspace to Russian aircraft and is seeking to ban Russian state-owned media in the bloc, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised to "ban in the EU the Kremlin's media machine" amid the ongoing Russian special operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.

"The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, as well as their subsidiaries, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin's war and to sow division in our union," she said.

In response, Sputnik retorted that the EU might as well ban the Internet.

"We advise the European Union to not stop at half measures and just ban the Internet outright," said the news agency.

Sputnik Moldova-Romania, one of over two dozen sister agencies of Sputnik International, became the latest Russian foreign language news outlet to face censorship in recent days, as Romania announced measures to crack down on Russian foreign-language media in connection with the crisis in Ukraine.

Sputnik Moldova received notification from Moldovan authorities on Saturday that the news agency's website would bet shuttered effective immediately and its radio broadcasts blocked by 7 March.

Amid a raging censorship campaign, Google banned the download of the app for RT's Russian channel in Ukraine at Kiev's request, while Facebook declared it would crack down on a "misinformation" campaign over events in Ukraine. Google-owned YouTube's censorship has already targeted Sputnik, RBC, TV Zvezda and others.

Besides censorship from state entities, over the weekend multiple Sputniks, including Sputnik International, Sputnik German SNA, Sputnik Ceska Republika and Sputnik Polska, also reported large-scale DDoS attacks.

On Sunday, Sputnik German SNA Website was hit by a DDoS attack, a day after a wave of cyberattacks targeted the international version of the Sputnik News Agency along with the Czech and Polish websites.

Sputnik Polska website had reported a DDoS attack, saying both mobile and the desktop versions of the page operate intermittently.

Other Russian web pages, including ones that belong to Roscosmos, RT, governmental bodies, services and other companies, were plagued by similar problems with access.

Moscow launched a "military operation" in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics' authorities formally sought assistance to defend themselves against attacks by Ukrainian troops.

The Kremlin's actions have been condemned by the United States, Japan, and several European countries, which have imposed economic sanctions against Russia as a result. Abroad package of measures taken by the US, the EU and their allies includes tough new banking and personal sanctions, and the shutdown of airspace to Russian commercial aircraft.