Attorney General: Russia has blocked 138,000 websites amid war against Ukraine

Russia has removed or blocked roughly 138,000 websites since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Attorney General Igor Krasnov told the newspaper Kommersant in an interview on Monday, August 8.

“More than 340 requests from prosecutors to block inaccurate, publicly significant information about the SVO [“special military operation”] have been satisfied. About 138,000 web resources have been deleted or blocked,” Krasnov said.

The attorney general also said that since the start of the February invasion, his office has been actively working to counteract the spread “fake news,” as well as calls for extremism, terrorism, and riots.

Digital rights group Roskomsvoboda clarified on Monday that according to its estimates, as of the end of July, more than 5,300 websites and links had been subjected to military censorship in Russia. Many of these online resources have seen all of their domains and subdomains blocked. Other sites avoided ending up on Russia’s blacklist of banned websites because their owners removed “controversial” content.