That sparked cries of censorship in Russia and abroad, with Navalny accusing U.S.
YouTube was involved in another controversy this month after it removed jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s voting strategy videos, citing a government order, ahead of Russia's September parliamentary elections. "Anyone calling for such retaliation does not show a good relationship with freedom of the press," Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin, adding that the YouTube action "was not a state measure." The German government has warned against potential retaliation against German media in Russia. The Foreign Ministry added that it had asked “competent Russian authorities” to draft a list of such retaliatory measures against German media. “The nature of the incident, which fully fits into the logic of the information war unleashed against Russia, makes symmetrical retaliatory measures against German media in Russia not only appropriate, but also necessary,” it said. Russia’s Foreign Ministry echoed Simonyan’s description of RT’s YouTube ban as “information war” and said in a statement that it was considering retaliatory steps. Otherwise, according to DW, Google faces a fine of up to 1 million rubles ($13,750) for not restoring the banned channels. Roskomnadzor has asked Google, whose parent company Alphabet owns YouTube, to lift all restrictions from RT DE and DFP, according to Simonyan. “If our oversight bodies find that this is indeed a violation of our legislation, then of course the possibility of forcing to comply with our laws shouldn’t be excluded,” Peskov said. His comments came hours after Roskomnadzor, the Russian government’s media watchdog, threatened to block YouTube in the country if it didn’t restore the banned channels. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russian authorities should have “zero tolerance” toward what he described as “censorship” and “hindering the dissemination of information through media,” according to the state-run TASS news agency.
“This is a real media war declared by the state of Germany against the state of Russia,” RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan tweeted, calling on the Russian government to ban German media, including Deutsche Welle (DW), ARD and ZDF, “out of self-respect.” The German government, responding to accusations of involvement from Moscow, said it had nothing to do with the U.S. YouTube said Tuesday it had deleted RT’s DE and DFP channels for repeatedly breaching its coronavirus misinformation policy. Russia has decried YouTube’s decision to delete the state-funded RT broadcaster’s German-language channels as “information warfare,” saying it could block German media or even YouTube itself in retaliation.
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