Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday intensified a crackdown on media outlets and individuals who fail to tow to the Kremlin line on Russia’s war in Ukraine, blocking Facebook and Twitter and signing into law a bill that criminalizes the intentional spreading of what Moscow deems to be “fake” reports.
This sweeping action by the Russian government has come against the foreign outlets that publish news in the Russian language seeking to establish even greater control on what information the domestic audience sees about the invasion of Ukraine.
The bill, quickly rubber-stamped by both houses of the Kremlin-controlled parliament and signed by Putin, imposes prison sentences of up to 15 years for those spreading information that goes against the Russian government’s narrative on the war.
The question regarding Russia is no longer “what we do to stop disinformation,” former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said on Friday. “The question has to be how do we promote information inside Russia — and I don’t have the answer.”
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Multiple outlets said they would pause their work inside Russia to evaluate the situation. Among them, CNN and CBS News said they would stop broadcasting in Russia while Bloomberg and the BBC said they would temporarily suspend the work of their journalists there.
Russian authorities have repeatedly and falsely decried reports of Russian military setbacks or civilian deaths in Ukraine as “fake” news. State media outlets refer to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation” rather than a war or an invasion.
Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, tweeted in response to Russia’s action that “millions of ordinary Russians will find themselves cut off from reliable information, deprived of their everyday ways of connecting with family and friends and silenced from speaking out.”
