MOSCOW, April 28. /TASS/. A Moscow court fined Twitter 3 million rubles ($41,100) for a number of publications, including those with the image of a swastika (banned in Russia) and instructions for making a Molotov cocktail, a TASS correspondent reported from the courtroom of the magistrate court department No. 422 of the Tagansky District on Thursday.
"The court found Twitter guilty under Part 2 of Art. 13.41 of the Administrative Offenses Code of the Russian Federation (‘Failure to remove information by the owner of a website or information resource in the information and telecommunication network ‘Internet’ in the event an obligation to remove such information is statutorily required in the Russian Federation’) and imposed a fine of 3 million rubles," the judge announced.
Earlier, the Russian Federal Agency for Supervision in Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) drew up a protocol on an administrative offense.
This happened after the administration of Twitter refused to comply with the decisions of the courts of the Novosibirsk region and the Chechen Republic. They included a requirement to remove a number of publications. One of them depicted a swastika and contained a slogan equating Russians with fascists. Another publication contained a link to instructions for making bottles with a combustible mixture.
Twitter spokesman Oleg Volodin demanded that the administrative case be dropped. He stated that Roskomnadzor blocked this service, and therefore its publications are not available in the Russian Federation. "Given these circumstances, posting these notes on Twitter is a minor act," he said. The court rejected this argument.