Telegraph website is blocked by Russians

RUSSIAN authorities have blocked The Daily Telegraph’s website for its reporting of the war in Ukraine.

The country’s communications watchdog said yesterday that it had ordered internet providers to block telegraph.co.uk.

It came after a statement from the prosecutor general that the newspaper had been “disseminating false information about a special military operation by the Russian armed forces in Ukraine”.

The move was triggered by the prosecutor banning an article The Telegraph published on Feb 23 – the day before Russia invaded Ukraine – about mobile crematoriums poised to be deployed in the war.

The prosecutor ruled the article contained “false information” and entered it on the list of “banned information”.

The Telegraph is the first British newspaper to have its website officially blocked in Russia. Last week, a number of its staff, including its editor, Chris Evans, were banned from entering the country, along with several other British media figures.

Other major British publications were still accessible online yesterday. The BBC was blocked in early March.

Although press freedoms have been disappearing for years in Russia, the crackdown has scaled up significantly since the war began.

In the first week of the war, authorities shut down Ekho Mosvky, a news radio station, and Dozhd, Russia’s only independent news TV channel.

A week later, the Kremlin passed a law making it a crime for any media outlet to call events in Ukraine a “war” or an “invasion”.

The Telegraph said: “This newspaper is proud of its reporting of the invasion of Ukraine and regrets attempts by Russia to restrict press freedom”.