On 3 May 2023, the Ukrainian online news portal Hrechka, which is based in Kropyvnytskyi, Central Ukraine, said it had received a letter from Russia’s internet censor, Roskomnadzor, asking the media outlet to take down an article about a recruitment campaign for the Ukrainian army. It was unclear on what legal basis Roskomnadzor demanded the removal of the article. Hrechka’s editor Anastasiya Dziubak told IMI, a Ukrainian press freedom group, that the media outlet would not comply with this demand. Dziubak added that Hrechka had received a similar request from Russia’s internet censor in 2021: at the time, Roskomnadzor demanded the removal of an article on a Russian school teacher sentenced to corrective labor for having published a pro-Ukrainian poem on social media.
Russia-Ukraine WarCensorship and regulationPublication ban, take-down order or forced deletion, fine, administrative action