Russia blocks Current Time and Crimea.Realities websites Roskomnadzor chief Aleksandr Zharov. (Dmitry Rozhkov/Wikimedia Commons)
This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
RFE/RL has strongly condemned Russia’s decision to block the websites of Current Time and the Russian-language Crimea.Realities project of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service amid the sites’ coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Access to the sites was blocked on February 28 after RFE/RL refused to comply with Russian state media-monitoring agency Roskomnadzor’s demands to delete information about Moscow’s invasion of its neighbor.
“The Kremlin is desperate to prevent the Russian people from learning the facts about the death and destruction the Russian invasion of Ukraine is causing,” RFE/RL President and CEO Jamie Fly said in a statement. “We will continue to provide the truth to the Russian people at this critical moment.”
Roskomnazdor sent its demands in a letter to Current Time on February 27, saying its website carried “information distributed with law violations.”
According to Roskomnadzor, the website distributed “inaccurate information of social significance about Russian military personnel allegedly killed or captured on the territory of Ukraine during a special military operation conducted by the Russian Federation’s armed forces.”
Roskomnadzor ordered Current Time to remove all information about the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, stressing that if it didn’t, its website would be blocked in Russia.
Current Time refused to remove the information in question.
In early February, Roskomnadzor threatened to block eight RFE/RL websites serving audiences in Russia, Ukraine, and Central Asia unless they took down articles tied to corruption investigations by jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny’s team. RFE/RL refused to comply with the demands.
RFE/RL has been informing its audiences about how to continue to get around the block.
Russian-language reporting by Crimea.Realities can be accessed on a mirror site. A Current Time mirror site is also available and material can be accessed using the virtual private network (VPN) nThlink.
In addition, audiences can subscribe to Current Time’s pages on Telegram, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok or watch its broadcasts live on YouTube and subscribe to its channel.
All materials from the Current Time site are also available on RFE/RL’s Google Play and App Store applications, which include a built-in VPN.
