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Numerous violations by YouTube serve as grounds to take action against company — watchdog

The regulator recalled that Russian courts had fined Google more than 25 billion rubles (about $290 million) over the past three years

MOSCOW, July 26. /TASS/. YouTube is breaking Russian law, so there are grounds for taking legal action against the company, Russia's communications watchdog told TASS.

"Numerous violations of our legislation, disrespect for our country and citizens provide grounds for taking measures against YouTube. We have sufficient instruments to motivate the company in this situation, and we reserve the right to use them," the statement said.

The regulator recalled that Russian courts had fined Google more than 25 billion rubles (about $290 million) over the past three years.

"However, even this measure has failed to work," the watchdog added.

On Thursday, Alexander Khinshtein, chair of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, said that YouTube traffic on desktop computers may be slowed down by 40% by the end of this week.

Earlier, Russian telecommunications operator Rostelecom informed about technical issues in the operation of equipment owned by Google and used on an operator’s network infrastructure, as well as in traffic exchange between telecom operators, which may affect the YouTube traffic in Russia.

YouTube was cautioned about potential technical issues with traffic speed on July 12, Rostelecom said, adding that Google (owner of the YouTube video sharing platform) was to be blamed for technical problems, as in 2022 the tech giant had washed its hands of expanding and renovating its equipment in Russia, which is used for backing up the Google Global Cache server (GGC, which facilitates user access to Google services).

In March 2022, YouTube disabled the Premium subscription option for Russians. After the start of Russia's special operation in Ukraine, the video giant suspended monetization for content creators from Russia, while Google switched off contextual advertising for Russian residents from the search engine and video hosting.