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Court fines Google $86,394 for videos of Azov Regiment and Right Sector

Earlier, the Prosecutor General’s Office demanded that Google removed this content, but this was not done

MOSCOW, April 21. /TASS/. Moscow’s Tagansky District Court fined Google 7 mln rubles ($86,394) for distributing propaganda videos of the Azov regiment and so-called Right Sector voluntary Ukrainian corps (outlawed in Russia), as well as a number of other banned organizations on YouTube, a TASS correspondent reported from the courtroom on Thursday.

"The court ruled to find Google guilty under part 2 article 13.41 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation (failing to delete information if the obligation to delete such information is included in the legislation of the Russian Federation) and imposed a penalty in the form of a 7 mln rubles fine," judge Timur Vakhrameev read out the decision.

The Right Sector videos on YouTube calling for terrorist attacks and sabotage on the territory of the Russian Federation, videos on the official channel of the Azov Regiment and other content from neo-Nazi Ukrainian groups became the reason for that [court’s decision]," the judge said.

Earlier, the Prosecutor General’s Office demanded that Google removed this content, but this was not done.

As stated in the judge's decision, the supervising agency also demanded to remove videos from the official YouTube channel of Alexey Navalny and the Ukrainian Free Idel-Ural non-governmental organization (recognized as undesirable in Russia) about the operation in Ukraine. However, the company did not do this either.

Earlier on Thursday, the court fined Google 4 mln rubles ($50,124) for spreading fake reports about losses of the Russian armed forces in the course of the special operation in Ukraine and victims among local residents.

Since last year, Russian courts have regularly imposed fines on foreign IT companies for refusing to remove prohibited content on the national segment of the Internet. Earlier, the court imposed a turnover-based fine in the amount of 7.2 billion rubles ($89.7 mln) on Google - the first such fine in the practice of the Russian court - for the company’s systematic failure to remove information banned in Russia.

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