Roskomnadzor Asks Facebook And Twitter Not To Interfere In The Election Process In Russia, Here's The Explanation

Roskomnadzor now has "substantial" tools capable of enforcing Russian legal requirements. (photo; fergana)

JAKARTA - Russia on Thursday, September 16 threatened US social media companies with hefty fines if they failed to remove content Moscow deems illegal. They also demanded that Apple and Google stop interfering in their internal affairs on the eve of the parliamentary election.

Internet services are under increasing pressure ahead of Russia's September 17-19 parliamentary elections. Russian authorities say foreign companies are hindering their efforts to block virtual private networks (VPNs) and online resources linked to imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

Now, a long-running dispute over banned content looks set to escalate after Vadim Subbotin, deputy head of state communications regulator Roskomnadzor, hinted at a sizeable fine.

"We will now consider imposing a turnover fine on companies that systematically violate Roskomnadzor's demands", Subbotin was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

While Russia has levied some small fines on foreign technology companies, and imposed penalties based on their turnover suggests potentially much larger amounts. Subbotin named Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet's Google as some of the companies at risk.

“Roskomnadzor now has “substantial” tools capable of enforcing Russian legal requirements”, said Subotin, without providing further details.

Roskomnadzor has been successful at slowing Twitter speeds since March and prevented some VPN providers from operating. Even last week it blocked major domain name system (DNS) services for several hours.

"Now, Russia is way ahead of China in terms of blocking capabilities", IT expert Mikhail Klimarev told Reuters.

Earlier on Thursday, MP Andrei Klimov said Russian prosecutors had formally approached Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, on September 9. The Russians told them to stop breaking Russian law by continuing to allow people to access the banned Navalny site. tactical voting app in their company store.

"(Apple and Google's) actions during the Russian election were seen as illegal and directly linked to interference in purely Russian domestic affairs", Klimov quoted Interfax as saying.

Apple and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.

Apple's AppStore experienced an outage earlier this week and GlobalCheck, a group that monitors website accessibility in Russia, late Wednesday said telecom operators had begun blocking access to Google Docs.