In a recent press conference at the media group “Russia Today,” Alexey Pushkov, head of the Federation Council Commission on Information Policy, confirmed that there are no current plans to block YouTube in Russia.
“To my knowledge, YouTube is not expected to be blocked,” Pushkov stated, addressing concerns that have been circulating in the media. However, he raised a question regarding the support of YouTube’s potentially aging equipment. “This question is more for Rostelecom, but there is a significant aspect here that YouTube is pursuing, let’s say, an unfriendly policy towards Russia. 83 resources – state and non-state – of ours are blocked.”
The rumors about a potential YouTube ban in the fall of 2024 surfaced amidst a slowdown in the service. Last week, Rostelecom reported failures in YouTube’s operation, attributing the decreased download speed to technical problems with Google’s equipment. This equipment is crucial for caching and speeding up content downloads.
As the situation evolves, it remains to be seen how these technical and political issues will be addressed by the relevant authorities.
Source: TASS