Ukraine to block access to Russian media and social networks
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree on new sanctions against Russia. The sanctions involve, in particular, blocking of Russian social networks such as VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. In addition, the access to all services of Russian media giant Yandex will be blocked. The text of the decree was published on the web site of the Ukrainian president.
Access to the social networks will be blocked following the restriction previously imposed on Russian Mail.ru group. Under the decree, the Ukrainian providers will have to block access to the entire mail.ru domain.
The sites of Russian anti-virus companies Laboratory Kaspersky and DrWeb have also been placed on the sanctions list.
Russian news outlets - TV Center, RBC, VGTRK, NTV Plus, Zvezda, TNT, REN, OTR will be blocked as well.
The sanction list contains 468 legal entities and 1228 individuals. The sanctions imposed on legal entities will be for a period of 1 to 3 years and those imposed against individuals from 1 to 5 years or indefinitely.
Yandex, Vkontakte and Odniklassniki are the most visited sites in the Ukrainian internet segment. Ukraine is the second biggest market for Vkontakte social network after Russia.