Roskomnadzor wrote to Google, the company that runs YouTube, requesting to remove the ban on the official YouTube channel of the Russian Parliament – the State Duma channel.
Roskomnadzor asked that Google LLC, which controls the YouTube Internet service, immediately restore access to the Duma TV channel of the Russian Federation’s State Duma on video hosting and explain why such restrictions were imposed.
Earlier, the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, announced on Saturday that Google had banned its official broadcast channel on the YouTube platform.
“Google has blocked Duma TV’s YouTube channel. It had more than 145,000 subscribers and our videos received more than 100 million views in total,” the chamber said in a statement on Saturday.
The Duma TV channel, which broadcasts plenary sessions and publishes exclusive comments from deputies, had previously been free from the limitations imposed by American platform companies on broadcasts of Russian official bodies and media in retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine.
The Duma authorities have, however, indicated that they were “prepared for this situation” and announced that their broadcasts continue on Russian platforms such as RuTube, VKontakte or the Telegram messaging channel, according to the note collected by the TASS agency.
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