MediaZona says that it has been blocked because it is “honestly covering what is happening in Ukraine”
News outlet MediaZona, which was founded in 2014 by members of the anarchist punk group Pussy Riot, has been blocked by the Russian authorities. It’s the latest in the growing crackdown on liberal media since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
On Sunday, the portal issued a statement saying that media watchdog Roskomnadzor demanded that it delete the entire website following an order from the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Zona.media can be found on the watchdog’s registry of restricted internet resources.
According to the statement from the Prosecutor General’s Office, quoted by MediaZona, the outlet has been punished for posting “deliberately false socially significant information that poses a threat of harm” to the life or health of citizens and risks the “mass disruption of public order” and “public safety.”
The Prosecutor General’s Office specifically pointed to information about what it called the “alleged attack by Russia on the territory of Ukraine,” according to MediaZona.
According to the authorities, the information on the site does not correspond to “official sources” and therefore creates “panic among people” and creates “the prerequisites for massive violations of public order and public safety.”
“We are forbidden to call war a war and speak honestly about it,” MediaZona said in response to the order.
The site, which was designated as a ‘foreign agent’ last year along with its editor-in-chief, Sergey Smirnov, and publisher Pyotr Verzilov, pledged to keep working.
The Prosecutor General’s Office also recently ordered Roskomnadzor to restrict access to Echo of Moscow radio and TV Rain, also citing coverage of the Ukraine crisis.
As a result, Echo of Moscow has been closed and TV Rain suspended its work.
Roskomnadzor has also limited access to US state-funded outlet Radio Svoboda (Radio Liberty), Deutsche Welle, and the BBC, and blocked news website Meduza.
Russian lawmakers also approved legislation that could see people imprisoned for 15 years if found guilty of peddling false information about the actions of the army.
Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed the military action in Ukraine was necessary to urgently “demilitarize” the country, to protect the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and to defend Russian national security amid NATO’s eastward expansion. The West responded to the attack by imposing harsh sanctions on Moscow.
RT (Russia Today) is a state-owned news organization funded by the Russian government. The information provided by this news source is being included by the Libertarian Hub not as an endorsement of the Russian government, but rather because it is being actively censored by Big Tech, Western governments and the corporate press. During times of conflict it is imperative that we have access to both sides of the story so we can form our own opinions, even if both sides are spewing their own propaganda. The censorship of RT, despite likely being a propaganda outfit for the Russian government, reduces our ability to hear one side of the conflict. For that reason, the Libertarian Hub will temporarily republish the RSS feed from RT. Visit https://rt.com
