The media situation in Russia – strict censorship and blockade

Access to almost all independent media in Russia is blocked, restricted or censored. The Kremlin strictly controls the narrative of the war in Ukraine, in particular on television, which since 24 February has glorified the Russian invasion of the neighbouring country as a liberation mission and has not reported on the crimes committed by the Russian army.

For most Russians, television, especially state television, is the main source of news, which is mostly based on war propaganda. The Ukrainians are supposedly shelling their own towns, while the Russian troops present themselves as liberators. When it comes to the press, there are many different opinions, but even they mostly toe the Kremlin line.

When the war started, the Russian media watchdog, Roskomnadzor, ordered the media to delete reports of a Russian military incursion into a neighbouring country that used the words ‘attack’, ‘invasion’ or ‘declaration of war’.

At the end of February, Roskomnadzor launched an investigation into the dissemination of unreliable public information against independent newspapers and other media for their coverage of the war in Ukraine. The media were accused of publishing false information about the shelling of Ukrainian cities and civilian casualties.

Earlier in March, Russia adopted a law making it punishable by up to 15 years in prison to publish “false information” about what the Russian army is doing. In practice, this means a penalty for publishing any information that casts doubt on the Kremlin’s narrative about the military action in Ukraine. The media were even forbidden to call the conflict a “war”, but had to call it a “special military operation”. As a result, the few remaining independent media in Russia began first to be censored and then closed down. One example is that the newspaper Novaya Gazeta blacked out an anti-war poster held by a protester when he interrupted a live news broadcast on Russian state television.

Western media in Russia

A week after the start of the invasion of Ukraine, Roskomnadzor, at the request of the prosecutor’s office, restricted access to the websites of several Western media outlets broadcasting in Russian and tightened its control over the internet. The reason given was the systematic dissemination of false information about the special military operation in Ukraine. Access to the BBC, Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, as well as the popular Latvian-based Meduza portal, was blocked. Russia has repeatedly complained before that Western media organisations offer a partial and often anti-Russian view of the world without holding their leaders to account. Now, the official explanation has been that Russian branches of Western media are spreading “blatantly false socially relevant information about the alleged Russian attack on Ukrainian territory”. In June, Radio Free Europe was fined 20 million roubles (about $325,000) for “falsely reporting on the Russian military operation”.

Currently, in Russia, the consumption of Western media is possible with restrictions, which in practice means that most of the time it is blocked. The websites and news of Western media such as the BBC, Deutsche Welle, Free Europe, Voice of America are mostly inaccessible, so a so-called restriction effectively means a block.

However, it would not be correct to say that all Western media are blocked all the time. It simply depends on the situation at the time, and sometimes it is possible to access websites and news, but in most cases it is not.

Independent media in Russia

Before the war started, the media in Russia could be divided into three groups – regime, opposition and media that criticised the government a little but never on important issues.

After the war, censorship was imposed, and most opposition media reacted by closing down or moving out of Russia. The real opposition media, such as Radio Ekho Moskvy, the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and Dozhd television, suspended or continued their work in Russia, but outside the country.

According to Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, 46 international media groups have left Russia, 269 have been blocked, while 76 individual journalists have been declared foreign agents, which basically means enemies, people.

Muratov says that journalists from state-independent media outlets who refused to stop doing their job were declared extremists, foreign mercenaries or undesirable organisations, so that whole teams of journalists and media workers had to flee the country, not only because of the draconian punishments, but also because they feared for their own lives.

He believes that the lack of an independent press is directly linked to the repression of readers.

Novaya Gazeta, one of the last independent newspapers in Russia, was closed down in September for allegedly incomplete documentation on a change of ownership. A court in Moscow revoked the newspaper’s printing licence at the request of the state media regulator. In March, Novaya Gazeta suspended operations in Russia after being warned that it was in breach of a new law imposing strict censorship on reporting on the conflict in Ukraine and was forced to remove material on the war from its website. Subsequently, an internet portal was set up outside Russia, which was also blocked inside the country.

Media that have criticised the government a little, but in a way that “does not hurt”, such as NTV or Kommersant, are still functioning, but they will not cross the red line when it comes to war.

When the conflict began, a significant number of journalists working for state television resigned because they disagreed with Vladimir Putin’s policies and because they could not do their job as they felt they should. There were also journalists who publicly rebelled.

One of the most famous examples is the action of Marina Ovsyanikova, a former journalist with Channel One of Russian state television, who publicly opposed the attack on Ukraine. She became known to the wider public when she appeared live on a TV news programme in March with the banner ‘No War’. Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. They are lying to you.” In June, she organised a protest near the Kremlin carrying a banner “Putin is a murderer, his soldiers are fascists”, and was subsequently placed under house arrest. Ovsyanikova fled Russia for Europe in October.

Social networks and search engines

As far as social networks are concerned, Facebook and Instagram can only be accessed from Russia via VPN. There are several VPN apps, but they are also often blocked, so users of Meta social networks have to change them frequently. An additional problem that greatly annoys Facebook and Instagram users is that they have to turn off VPNs when using other apps that require current location, such as banking apps. Twitter works without a VPN, while apps from media companies such as the BBC, CNN, Medusa and others cannot be accessed without a VPN. Twitter works without a VPN, while apps from media companies such as the BBC, CNN, Medusa and others cannot be accessed without a VPN.

For example, on search engines, if one searches for ‘Ukraine’ or ‘war in Ukraine’ on the Russian search engine Yandex in Russia, the first news that comes up will be in line with Kremlin policy, because the first pages of the search will be related to pro-government news, not independent media. If the Google search engine is used in Russian, media close to the Kremlin will appear first, with independent and Western sources appearing occasionally.

At the beginning of March, the European Union banned the Russian media outlets Russia Today and Sputnik on the grounds that they are tools of the Kremlin to spread disinformation and manipulate information, and that they are instruments to encourage and support Russian aggression against Ukraine, which is a direct threat to public order and EU security. Serbia’s official position is that it is not joining the sanctions against Russia. Sputnik has a correspondent in Belgrade and broadcasts news in Serbian, while Russia Today, the Russian state television channel, launched a portal in Serbia in mid-November and a TV channel is expected to be operational by 2024./Danas/