Moscow will review reasons for blocking several accounts on Twitter - Foreign Ministry
Social network Twitter announced earlier that it had removed 100 accounts allegedly associated with Russia
MOSCOW, February 23. /TASS/. Moscow will review the grounds for Twitter removing 100 accounts allegedly associated with Russia, official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova told TASS on Tursday.
"We will review the grounds for blocking and give an expert opinion," the diplomat said.
Zakharova also called the wording of the company's statement interesting, according to which the blocked accounts tried to influence the EU and the US. "Millions of users can fall under it. Even the resources of [Russian blogger Alexey] Navalny's supporters - they certainly influence the United States and the European Union, given the speed at which anti-Russian sanctions are stamped there at the request of ‘agents of influence’," she said.
Social network Twitter announced earlier that it had removed 100 accounts allegedly associated with Russia.
"Today we’re disclosing two separate networks that have Russian ties. Our first investigation found and removed a network of 69 fake accounts that can be reliably tied to Russian state actors. A number of these accounts amplified narratives that were aligned with the Russian government, while another subset of the network focused on undermining faith in the NATO alliance and its stability. As part of our second investigation in this region, we removed 31 accounts from two networks that show signs of being affiliated with the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and Russian government-linked actors. These accounts amplified narratives that had been previously associated with the IRA and other Russian influence efforts targeting the United States and European Union," Twitter said.
At the same time, the company announced removal of around 130 accounts "originating in Iran that were attempting to disrupt the public conversation during the first 2020 US Presidential Debate".