Access to social networks suspended
Ukrainians are now unable to communicate with friends on Odnoklassniki and VKontakte and use Yandex services, since the head of state decided to introduce restrictive measures against some citizens and legal entities of Russia. More details about the text of the decree and the names of the companies against which sanctions were imposed can be found on the official Internet portal of the head of Ukraine.
Currently, only the Yandex search engine is available to Ukrainians. It will be impossible to use other services, including Mail.ru. In addition, restrictions also affected other Russian companies. We are talking about Kaspersky Lab, the DrWeb company, which produces anti-virus programs, large Russian television companies such as RBC, TV Center, Zvezda, OTR, TNT, VGTRK.
Also, the sanctions list was replenished by United Russia member A. Zhuravlev, members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation V. Rodin, A. Kulikov and V. Bessonov, Fair Russia member O. Pakhalkov and M. Bryachak, and LDPR member A. Didenko. They have been banned from entering the territory of Independence Square for the next 12 months. The total number of Russians included in the list was 1228. The number of legal entities increased to 468.
Recall that the duration of sanctions against Russian companies is 1-3 years. Individuals are prohibited from entering the country for one, three or five years. Often, Ukrainian authorities impose more stringent restrictions on Russians - a ban on entry into the country indefinitely. According to Russian politicians, such bans will not affect the lives of Russian citizens and companies in any way, since Ukraine is not their business partner.
The news that the blocking affected the popular and most visited Russian services quickly spread on the Internet. Ukrainians began to actively discuss the innovation. Some support the actions of the authorities, others say that the officials' antics are becoming absurd.
It is worth adding that sanctions against Russia were first introduced by Ukraine in the fall of 2015. Then there were 388 Russians and 105 companies on the sanctions list. A year later, this document was replenished with another 250 individuals and 46 legal entities. A month later, restrictive measures affected payment systems of the Russian Federation. This year, Ukrainian authorities decided to tighten sanctions by including subsidiaries of Russian state banks on their “black” list. We are talking about Sberbank, Vnesheconombank, VTB. The specified financial and credit institutions are prohibited from withdrawing capital from Ukraine.
