By Anna Peverieri
April 29 (Reuters) – Russia has restricted access to an independent media outlet for distributing “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations”, the country’s media regulator was quoted on Wednesday as saying, a phrase used by authorities to describe LGBT relationships.
The editor-in-chief of the ‘Takie Dela’ outlet, Evgenia Volunkova, confirmed that the regulator, Roskomnadzor, had ordered the closure of the entire website, but said authorities may have had in mind its broader coverage of “sensitive issues”.
Russian authorities have increased restrictions on independent media and online content since the start of the war in Ukraine, increasing blocks and legal pressure on outlets they say break the law.
“We don’t think we were blocked for any specific publication. We believe we were blocked for our systemic work as a whole,” Volunkova told Reuters.
“We constantly write about sensitive topics that may displease the authorities,” she said.
This included coverage of internet outages, pressure on people to adopt a new state-backed messaging app, flooding in southern Russia, the culling of cattle in Siberia and the social consequences of the war in Ukraine, she said.
Volunkova said the regulator had not specified in its notification what specific material it had objected to.
Roskomnadzor told the Vedomosti newspaper it had blocked the site on April 24 for distributing LGBT content, which the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church see as evidence of the moral decay that they say is destroying Western societies.
Volunkova said the outlet, founded in 2025, would continue working inside Russia, using alternative web addresses.
(Reporting by Anna PeverieriEditing by Mark Trevelyan and Gareth Jones)
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