MOSCOW, May 11. /TASS/. Moscow’s magistrate court has fined Google 3 mln rubles $39,086 for refusing to remove information promoting non-traditional sexual relations.

The court decided "to find Google guilty under part 2 article 13.41 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation (failure of the owner of a website to delete information or a web-page in case the obligation to delete such information, such a web page, is included in the legislation of the Russian Federation), impose a fine in the amount of 3 million rubles," judge Timur Vakhrameyev said.

The reason was the company’s refusal to remove two videos from Youtube. The first video is by blogger Karen Shahinyan about raising children in same-sex families and the other by Grani.ru (recognized as a foreign agent in Russia) about the lives of people from the LGBT community in St. Petersburg. These videos were discovered by Russia’s media watchdog, which demanded that Google remove them immediately.

Since 2020, Google has repeatedly been brought to administrative responsibility for refusing to remove content banned on the territory of the Russian Federation. In 2021, Google was fined 7.2 bln rubles ($93.82 mln) for its systematic failure to remove information prohibited in Russia.