On January 17, when the ruling opponent Alexeï Navalny was arrested and imprisoned on his return to Russia, the country rose and protests were organized that gathered tens of thousands of people across Russia without permission.
Given the complexity of the situation, the Kremlin in no way questions itself and prefers to blame the United States and the web giants. Indeed, Maria Zakharova, Director of Information and Press at the Russian Foreign Ministry, is critical “The dissemination of messages supporting illegal actions in several Russian cities through the American Embassy in Moscow on its website and on social networks.”
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However, this is not entirely the case. On Saturday, the American Embassy in Moscow posted meeting locations on its premises to encourage its nationals to be careful by avoiding them. Maria Zakharova explains in a second step that the Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Riabkov had a discussion that quickly climbed into the towers with the American Ambassador John Sullivan.
Russia blames social media
The Russian diplomat also accuses Western social networks such as the Facebook group, Twitter, Snapchat and many others of interfering in the country’s internal affairs. The Russian population is increasingly using Instagram, YouTube and even TikTok to express their dissatisfaction and to question government decisions. In light of this observation, Maria Zakharova stated: “We are seriously working on how US Internet platforms are involved in US interference in our internal affairs.”
According to a statement from Facebook, the Kremlin has asked Mark Zuckerberg and his teams to remove certain content that requires demonstrations. However, the American giant would not have listened to these requests because the content in question did not violate the rules set by the social network. The same goes for Google, which, according to Roskomnadzor, officially denies having deleted 50% of the videos calling for demonstrations from its platform.
