Russia shut down its own govt websites in a 'mess-up' while slowing down Twitter: Report

Russia on Tuesday slowed down speed of Twitter in a move to restrict microblogging website but accidentally shut down Kremlin’s own website as well as or government agency sites, reported Guardian. state communications regulator, Roskomnzor said that it was retaliating over Twitter’s alleged failure of removing banned content over nationwide protests in support of Russian President Vlimir Putin’s critic Alexei Navalny. Russian authorities h previously even threatened to entirely block American platform if it did not comply with its deletion demands.

Even though punitive move was aimed at video content on platform and Twitter was slowed down, several government websites reportedly went abruptly offline on March 10 including kremlin.ru and Russian government website, government.ru. action reportedly also impacted Russia’s internet censor, Roskomnzor as well as economics ministry. Several pro-Kremlin commentators even suggested that outages of government websites might be due to a possible cyber-attack by United States. 

Russian President Vlimir Putin has been incensed at role played by social media websites in mobilising support for jailed opposition leer and his staunch critic, Alexei Navalny. While Putin critic was jailed in January just after he flew back to Moscow, his arrest sparked biggest anti-government protests in country in a dece. Marches were witnessed reportedly in at least 150 Russian cities. 

Eventually, after blaming US, Russia reportedly mitted that problem faced by government websites was domestic. It furr blamed unavailability of state-owned sites on a router malfunction inside digital service provider, Rostelecom. access to websites was later restored. media outlet quoted  Andrei Soldatov, a Russian cyber expert and author of Red Web that blocking of websites was an outcome of an internal “mess-up” connected to Twitter slowdown. 

Russia Sues Google, Facebook, Twitter And Ors

Meanwhile, Russia is also suing five social media giants including Twitter, Google, Facebook for allegedly failing to delete posts motivating children to take part in illegal protests, reported Interfax news agency on March 9 quoting Moscow court. Twitter, Facebook, Google have three respective cases against m and are punishable by a fine of up to 4 million roubles or around $54,000. report also said that cases have been filed against TikTok and Telegram as well.