Oliver Mitchell

Russian Authorities Restrict Twitter Again after Invading Ukraine

If you live in Russia and you hope to learn the truth about “special military operation” in Ukraine, you may search for it on Twitter. And not open it at all, after Russian authorities have restricted access to this social media. It feels like Twitter is not available in Russia at all and probably will be down for some time.

Last year, Russian authorities already imposed official restrictions on Twitter after Though there were no further restrictions, now Twitter is effectively down. At least, this is what NetBlocks detects that Twitter generates no traffic within main Russian networks, like MTS and Rostelecom.

The site still can be accessed via VPN, but not directly. This slows it down. While Twitter was initially designed for short posts which don’t take much data to post or read, later it enabled media support and external links. These media materials are of the most interest for Russians (and not only) in search of firsthand information on Russian invasion in Ukraine.
Twitter administration is aware of the problem. In its official tweet on the issue, the support admitted that the problem existed and promised to do the best to fix it as soon as possible. It doesn’t look like a technical issue, but rather like an act of censorship. The reason is probably the statement made by Russian authorities that they only attack military objects, though there are tons of evidence of the opposite: Ukrainian civilian objects are seen shelled, civilians killed and wounded… Do you expect Russia to admit it, really? The way out it finds is to protect its citizens from all the information except for the official.

That’s why Facebook will soon be restricted too. What else do you expect? Welcome to our comments where we don’t practice political censorship (but do practice fact checking!)