Specialists from China arrive in Russia to develop a plan to block YouTube
Blocking YouTube in Russia will be possible in the fourth quarter of 2023
Russian dictator Putin agreed in talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping to help strengthen Internet censorship.
Source. This was reported by The Moscow Times with reference to the pro-Kremlin publication Octagon.
According to the newspaper's sources, a group of Chinese cyber threat experts has arrived in Moscow to analyze and prepare a technical roadmap for the complete blocking of YouTube in Russia, together with their Russian counterparts.
Part of the technology, according to Octagon, will be provided by the People's Liberation Army of China, and the rest will be based on Russia's own Russian and Belarusian developments.
According to the schedule, blocking YouTube, one of the largest platforms for anti-war content, will be possible in the fourth quarter of 2023.
The pilot project may be implemented by Rostelecom, and if successful, by all other providers, Octagon writes.
VKontakte is already preparing to block YouTube, sources in the telecommunications market told Forbes.
According to them, the company has begun installing servers on providers' networks to speed up the download of video content. This is necessary because if YouTube is blocked, VK will experience a large-scale surge in traffic, explains one of the sources.
The presidential administration's political bloc, headed by Sergei Kiriyenko, as well as many members of the Cabinet of Ministers, are in favor of preserving YouTube, according to Medusa's sources close to the Kremlin.
Their argument boils down to the fact that people who go to YouTube for political content will still get it through a VPN.
Security forces and the first deputy head of the Presidential Administration, the Kremlin's information bloc curator, Alexei Gromov, are increasingly demanding that the video service be shut down.
The final decision will be made by Putin, who has previously called the Internet an invention of Western intelligence services and suggested developing a separate, closed "intranet" for Russia.
Background. As a reminder, a documentary about the special operation of the defenders of Ukraine at Azovstal in 2022 was released and is available on YouTube.
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