MOSCOW, March 11. /TASS/. Russia will resort to resolute measures in case US-based company Meta, which operates social network platforms FaceBook and Instagram, fails to ban calls for violence against Russian nationals, particularly Russian troops, Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
"This information needs to be scrupulously studied," Peskov told journalists. "This is all hard to imagine."
"I am sure that our relevant departures will figure out soon if it is all true," he continued. "We hope that this is not the case, because if it comes out to be true we will resort to resolute measures to stop activities of this company."
Reuters news agency reported earlier citing Meta’s internal messaging that direct posts of its Facebook and Instagram subscribers calling for violence in regard to Russian nationals and, most particularly, Russian troops would not be blocked in a number of countries. According to the news agency, Meta’s internal e-mail correspondence shows that calls for the violence against Russians are permitted, when users’ posts are about the Russian special operation in Ukraine.
The company’s policy exemptions are in force on the territories of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine and Estonia. According to Reuters, Meta will not be temporarily deleting posts, sent from the territories of Poland, Russia and Ukraine, urging the death of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Meta acknowledged later that it allowed calls for the violence against Russian troops in view of the special military operation in Ukraine. Meta Spokesman Andy Stone wrote on Twitter that the company had "temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders’."
"We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians," Meta spokesperson added.
On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed decrees at the ceremony in the Kremlin on recognizing the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Putin met with DPR and LPR (the Lugansk People’s Republic) leaders, Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik, and signed with them the treaties on friendship, cooperation and mutual aid between Russia and both republics.
Russian President Putin said in a televised address on February 24 that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in order to protect people "who have been suffering from abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years." The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories.
The Russian Defense Ministry reassured earlier that Russian troops are not targeting Ukrainian cities, but are limited to surgically striking and incapacitating Ukrainian military infrastructure. There are no threats whatsoever to the civilian population.