Russia|The Russian lawyer believes that the task of the Russian Foreign Ministry was mainly to create “information noise” around the blocking of media sites.
The summary is made by artificial intelligence and checked by a human.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Tuesday that it will limit access to the media content of several EU countries in Russia. According to it, the restrictions are a countermeasure to the EU’s actions targeting the Russian media.
However, many of the websites that Russia announced were blocked have been blocked in Russia a long time ago. HS belongs to these sites.
According to the Russian lawyer interviewed by HS, the purpose of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was mainly to show that the Russian authorities think that the issue of media freedom is international, and not internal to Russia.
Russian the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Tuesday restricting access to the contents of several EU countries’ media, such as Helsingin Sanomat, in Russia.
Ad however, aroused surprise, because access to the HS website mentioned in the list, for example, is in Russia already blocked more than two years ago.
No new actions, for example against foreign journalists accredited to Russia, were announced on Tuesday either.
According to the Russian lawyer interviewed by HS, this is a symbolic gesture, with which Russia tries to show that the blocking of websites is an international matter, and not an internal matter of Russia.
Tuesday Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia toldthat it is a countermeasure to the actions of the European Union: the European Council decided in mid-May to suspend the broadcasting of Russian Ria Novosti, Rossijskaja Gazeta and Izvestija in the EU. According to it, they are spreaders of disinformation supported by the Kremlin.
The Russian Foreign Ministry announced that it will reconsider the restrictions if the EU lifts restrictions on Russian media.
On Wednesday morning, a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova emphasized that the bans are a countermeasure to the EU’s actions targeting the Russian media.
“But the US State Department is blaming Russia for everything,” Zaharova lamented on his Telegram channel.
Websites Roskomnadzor, which is responsible for blocking, is the state body that supervises the media in Russia. Currently, Roskomnadzor has blocked access to 513,660 websites.
Roskomnadzor can block websites both on its own initiative and at the request of other authorities, such as courts, says a Russian lawyer Olga for HS. For security reasons, we call Olga only by her first name.
For example, HS was blocked According to Roskomnadzor In Russia on May 25, 2022, at the request of the Attorney General’s Office.
However, not all blocked sites are related to Russia’s suppressed freedom of speech and human rights situation. For example, in addition to the media, the list of blocked pages includes casinos and sites containing child pornography.
Olga considers it clear that this time the request to block foreign media has come to Roskomnadzor from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Roskomnadzor’s task is only the technical implementation of the blocking.
“I am not surprised that most of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs [tiistaina julkaistussa] of the media mentioned in the list have been blocked in Russia for a long time,” says Olga.
The list published by the Russian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday includes 81 media outlets from different parts of Europe. From Finland, in addition to Helsingin Sanomat, Yle, Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti are on the list. Of these, only Iltalehti had not been blocked in Russia before.
The lawyer believes that the main task of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was mainly to create “information noise” around the topic.
“They wanted to show that from now on, in the opinion of the Russian authorities, this issue is already international in nature, and no longer just [Venäjän] an internal thing,” says Olga.
HS’s Moscow correspondent Jenni Jeskanen according to HS, you could still access HS’s website in Moscow with a VPN connection – just as it has been for the past two years.
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