An unreliable report on Ukraine's invasion leads to Russian regulator blocking Google News

On Wednesday, Russia's media regulator blocked Google's news aggregator service because of its alleged dissemination of "unreliable" information regarding the conflict between Russians and Ukrainians.

The regulator Roskomnadzor has blocked access to the online resource news.google.com following a request from the Russian prosecutor general's office.

According to Reuters, Google has confirmed that Russian users have trouble accessing the Google News app and website.

“We’ve worked hard to keep information services like News accessible to people in Russia for as long as possible,” the statement read.

Russian parliament recently passed a law criminalizing the distribution of "fake news" about the country's military, with those found guilty facing prison sentences of up to 15 years.

“The American online news resource in question provided access to numerous publications and materials containing inauthentic and publicly important information about the course of the special military operation on the territory of Ukraine,” the regulator was quoted by Russia’s state-run news agency Interfax as saying.

24 March 2022