The Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) has asked the leading Internet companies of the Russian Federation to develop domestic video hosting sites that will operate for the Russian media.

The appeal was made after YouTube had totally banned Russian propaganda ANNA NEWS agency from having access to, creating, or owning user accounts.

Earlier, Roskomnadzor demanded that Google must restore access to the agency’s channels, noting that “the censorship policy towards Russian media is unacceptable and violates key principles of free dissemination of information and unimpeded access to it.”

The ANNA NEWS propagandists complained that Google had blocked eight YouTube channels of the agency since the beginning of November.

To recap, the ANNA NEWS agency has been repeatedly accused of spreading misinformation and Russian propaganda. In particular, many of its news stories concerned the war in Donbas, the attempted annexation of Crimea, the events in Syria, etc.

Earlier it was reported that the videos on ANNA NEWS channels got hundreds of millions of views.

Bohdan Marusyak

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