In a daring response against Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine officially banned the internet access of the Russian social network, VK, and the Russian search engine, Yandex. This was directly ordered by Ukraine’s president Petro Poreshenko. Even though Mr. Poreshenko has his own pages on these social networks, he announced that he would shut them down and urged all Ukraine citizens to follow in his steps.
“The challenges of hybrid war demand adequate responses,” Mr. Poreshenko stated on his VK page. “Massive Russian cyber-attacks across the world, particularly the interference in the French election campaign, show it is time to act differently and more decisively.”
Yandex stated that the main victims in this decision are the Ukrainian users and Mail.ru started advising Ukrainians how to bypass this ban.
On the other hand, responses from the Russian side was extremely criticizing to the move as they have stated that this move is a violation to the people’s right to information access. They also stated that they are more than ready to respond in a reciprocity manner. In other words, block Ukrainian websites based in Russia. However, it would only be the users that would be highly affected by these actions. Especially that VK alone has over 15 million Ukrainian users.
Russia’s Mail.ru estimates that these sanctions would affect 25 million users in both Russia and Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government had tried to justify this move by claiming that not banning these sites can bring a security and privacy risk to the users in Ukraine as most of their personal information is posted online. Since there is an ongoing political dispute between the 2 countries, Russia can use this point against Ukraine. The Security and Defense Council in Ukraine had released a statement saying that these sanctions are designed to protect the citizens of Ukraine and to ensure the cyber security of the country.
This is not the first nor will it be the last of Russian sites being banned in Ukraine. Prior to this, 400 Russian sites have been added to the ban list since 2014.
Until this moment the social network sites are not yet restricted however the major internet provider in Ukraine, Ukrtelecom, has been ordered to block them and has in fact started the process of banning these sites. It will be a matter of days before it takes effect.
Internet users in Ukraine responded to this in different ways; some were extremely sarcastic, and others were just appalled. However the majority was completely against this move.
