Russian authorities seek to block all websites that redistribute ‘Team Navalny’ content

The Russian Attorney General’s office is seeking to block websites that redistribute content created by Alexey Navalny’s outlawed Anti-Corruption Foundation (the FBK).

Lawyer Leonid Solovyov from the Net Freedoms Project, who is representing Navalny and his team in a legal case over the authorities’ decision to block his website in Russia, told Interfax about this latest demand on Thursday, September 23.

“Today, at the hearing […] it became known that in case[s] involving the reproduction of information from FBK resources on other sites, the Attorney General’s Office is demanding to restrict access to them in accordance with the established procedure,” Solovyov said.

Navalny and his team are asking the courts to recognize an earlier decision to block more than 40 websites linked to the FBK as illegal. The demand from the Attorney General’s Office to expand the block to websites that redistribute FBK content was included in the Russian federal censorship agency’s objects to the lawsuit. The claim itself will be considered in court on October 11.

An appendix to the request from the Attorney General’s Office includes a 19-page list of Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Yandex.Dzen, and Telegram web pages that contain FBK materials; it also lists the websites for individuals projects run by Navalny’s supporters. In total, state prosecutors found “at least 173 [online] resources used by the Anti-Corruption Foundation, [which is] banned for extremism.”

• Russia’s federal censor (Roskomnadzor) has already blocked Alexey Navalny’s website and more than 40 other online resources associated with the FBK. Roskomnadzor claimed that these “Internet resources are used to promote and continue prohibited extremist activities.” Navalny’s nonprofits and political network were outlawed in Russia as “extremist organizations” earlier this year.
• Ahead of the 2021 State Duma elections, the Russian authorities demanded that Google and Apple remove Navalny’s mobile app from their App Stores, in an effort to restrict access to his team’s “Smart Vote” initiative. YouTube and Google Docs were also pressured to block access to web pages featuring lists of candidates endorsed by Smart Vote. In addition, Telegram temporarily blocked Smart Vote bots, citing Russia’s “election silence” during the voting process.