On 8 December 2023, regional media outlet Eastern Option, which reports on news from Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, said that its Instagram page had again been blocked for alleged community rules violations, with the media outlet claiming that “[pro-]Russian bots” were responsible for complaints which triggered the ban. Eastern Option said this was the third time in two months that their Instagram account had been blocked, with the outlet inviting users to instead read news on their Telegram channel, Facebook and X accounts. The media outlet linked the Instagram account ban with recent DDoS attacks Eastern Option was reportedly a victim of, claiming that pro-Russian actors were attempting to “sink Ukrainian media”.
As of December 18, Eastern Option’s only publicly available Instagram account was one marked as a “reserve channel”, with the account’s description explaining that the media outlet’s main account was still unaccessible.