Google has been fined by a Russian court for failing to take down videos from YouTube. The videos in questions were related to Kremlin’s military operation in Ukraine. It was the Moscow court that ordered the tech giant to pay $135,000 (approx. 1 crore). Giving the reason, the court said that Google had overlooked the orders of state media to take down posts claiming substantial Russian losses in Ukraine.
As per Russian state news agencies, one video revealed an alleged phone chat between Russian soldiers and their relatives back home. In fact, the video showed troops grumbling of several casualties among their groups. All this led to Russia imposing a penalty on Google.
One of the videos reported by the state media, which was available on YouTube, showed that soldiers who were trying to step back from Ukrainian counter offensives were being shot at by retreat-blocking Russian detachments.
Google’s video sharing platform YouTube has been at loggerheads with Russia throughout its almost two-month long campaign held in Ukraine.
Earlier this month, Google enraged the Russian officials further by obstructing the lower house of parliament’s official media channel. Following this, Russian court banned Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and called them “extremist” organisations.
These three can still be accessed using VPN services, especially on Windows. However, most of the Russians to get the latest updates refer to their state media channels and various other media outlets controlled by the government. These are known for following strict rules on covering the military campaign.
