MOSCOW, October 27. /TASS/. Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has sent a request to communications watchdog Roskomnadzor, asking it to limit access to Internet resources of the VKontakte social network accused of inciting extremism, an official spokesperson said on Monday.
“The monitoring of the Internet found that seven Russian-language pages of the VKontakte social networking website provided an open access to the materials containing calls for extremist and terrorist activity,” spokesperson for the Prosecutor General’s Office Marina Gridneva said.
The materials were available for “an unlimited number of persons,” she added.
The pages contained text and video materials linked to the activity of international terrorism organizations and groups, as well as calls to participate in armed groups of the Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
The materials on the website, Russia’s alternative to Facebook with 239 million accounts, also encouraged and justified actions of illegal armed groups opposing the government troops on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic.
The Islamic State, which has been fighting against the government in Syria since 2012, launched an offensive in Iraq in June, seizing vast areas in both countries and proclaiming a new “caliphate.”
The US and its allies have recently launched airstrikes against the fighters in both Syria and Iraq. Russia insists that fighting against terrorism should be conducted on a solid basis of international law under the auspices of the United Nations Security Council.