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No plans to block YouTube in Russia — Safe Internet League chief

Yekaterina Mizulina stressed that there was no good alternative to YouTube at the moment

NIZHNIY NOVGOROD, December 12. /TASS/. There are no plans to further restrict video-sharing platform YouTube in Russia, the head of the Safe Internet League, Yekaterina Mizulina, said, adding that an alternative to it should be devised in Russia.

"We do not have anything similar yet and won’t have it in the near future. In terms of restrictions, nothing like this is expected for now," Mizulina said.

She also noted that the site "behaved insidiously" after the start of the special military operation in Ukraine, uploading videos that said "bad things about the country."

"There is pretty much no good alternative [to YouTube] at the moment. We very much expect VK Video to become a worthy Russian analogue, but it still needs to be fine-tuned," she added.

YouTube disabled the Premium subscription option for Russians in March 2022. After the start of Russia's special operation in Ukraine, the video giant suspended monetization for content creators from Russia, while Google switched off contextual advertising for Russian residents from the search engine and video hosting.