MOSCOW, Russia —Legislators in Russia passed new laws on Friday that punish people who spread “false news” about the army. This is the latest move by the government to try to stop people from speaking out against it one week after it invaded Ukraine.
The law establishes various prison sentences and penalties for anyone who disseminates “knowingly false material” regarding the military.
“If the forgeries result in significant repercussions, (the law) provides for up to 15 years in jail,” Russia’s lower chamber of parliament said.
Additionally, amendments were enacted to punish or imprison anybody advocating sanctions on Russia.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the parliament’s leader, started the meeting by slamming international social media platforms, after Russia lost access to Facebook for a short time on Friday.
“All of these information technology businesses, starting with Instagram and continuing with the others, are headquartered in the United States of America. They are unmistakably used as firearms. They are a conduit for hate and deception. “We must fight this,” he said.
In the year since the invasion, Russia has seen a new level of suppression of independent and critical voices that has never been seen before.
Russia’s media watchdog said Friday that it has banned access to the BBC and other independent news websites, ratcheting up internet censorship.
Foreign media restrictions—
Following a request from prosecutors, Roskomnadzor “restricted” access to the BBC, the independent news website Meduza, the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, and the Russian-language websites of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Svoboda.
According to Roskomnadzor, the requests were sent in each instance on February 24, the day Russian President Vladimir Putin started his campaign in Ukraine.
At a meeting of the Kremlin’s human rights council, Fadeyev accused Western media of orchestrating “a massive flood of false information emanating from Ukraine” and said the council had established a project to combat it.
In another assault on critical voices, Russian authorities searched the office of the country’s most renowned human rights organisation, Memorial, on Friday. The Memorial was forced to shut late last year, drawing worldwide outrage.
Russia’s invasion has already resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people, the displacement of over a million people, and charges of war crimes.
As a response to Western-led sanctions against Russia, the ruble has fallen. The central bank had to put a 30% tax on hard currency sales in order to stop bank runs.
Narratives produced by state-controlled media
Moscow has very few economic tools at its disposal. On Friday, the duma approved a measure that would freeze foreigners’ assets in Russia for “violating Russian rights.”
Reporters in the Russian media have been told to only use official material to describe the invasion as a military one.
Meanwhile, state-controlled networks have bolstered official narratives about Ukrainian nationalism and Moscow’s assertion that the Ukrainian military uses people as human shields.
For the time being, it looks as if the invasion has spelled the end for what remains of Russia’s independent media.
Ekho Mosvky, a liberal-leaning radio station majority-owned by Russia’s energy behemoth Gazprom, said Thursday that it will cease operations after its removal from the air due to its coverage of the Ukraine conflict.
Authorities shut down the Ekho website and station on Monday as a result of the station’s distributing “deliberately misleading information” about the violence.
Another independent publication, Znak, said Friday that it was halting operations “because of the vast number of limitations that have lately been imposed on media activity in Russia.”
The BBC said this week that the readership of its Russian-language news website had “more than quadrupled” in the prior week, reaching a record 10.7 million visitors.
A BBC representative said Friday that the company would “continue our efforts to make BBC News available in Russia and around the world” even though there were some restrictions. This is despite the restrictions.
