Media censorship: Russia blocks website of “Die Welt

The website of the news magazine “Welt” is no longer accessible from Russia with immediate effect. This was announced by the daily newspaper on its own website. It is assumed that the blockage on the part of the Russian censorship authority was due to critical reporting on the Ukraine war.

Homepage of Welt no longer accessible

The news magazine Welt and its website welt.de are blocked in Russia with immediate effect. Since last Saturday, people from Russia can no longer access the website, according to unanimous reports from several news agencies in Russia.

Roskomnadzor, Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision in the Field of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Communications, has added the homepage along with all sub-domains to the list of blocked websites, thus preventing access nationwide.

In March 2022, the website of BILD had already been blocked, and before that the websites of Deutsche Welle, as well as the British news channel BBC were made inaccessible in the course of media censorship.

Public prosecutor’s office initiates blocking

According to the report, the website was blocked on July 09, 2022, due to a demand by the prosecutor’s office in Russia. The specific reason for this is formulated very vaguely in the public database of Roskomnadzor, the World writes. Information is being disseminated that violates the law, it says.

Under the related file number of the series 27-31-2022 are also listed other websites whose blocking is related to the media censorship of the government of Russia with the Ukraine war. Presumably also because welt.de also publishes news reports in Russian, including translations of BILD articles, which are apparently a thorn in the Kremlin government’s side.

Russia has been waging war against neighboring Ukraine since the beginning of 2022, using a wide variety of means. For example, back in March, streaming provider Netflix was mandated to show propaganda and subsequently suspended its service in Russia while the country blocked GPS signals in Ukraine.

Gradually, more and more companies turned their backs on Russia and imposed a wide variety of sanctions, which is why by March 2022, Russia wanted to almost completely cut itself off from the global Internet. Also in March 2022, the hacker organization Anonymous had successfully hacked Roskomnadzor’s database, making public some 364,000 documents from the censorship agency .