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Ukraine banned two popular social media sites Tuesday, in a new attempt to purge Russian influence in the country. The move to block these Russian websites is an extension of sanctions against Russia that have been in place since it annexed Crimea in 2014. Personally announced by President Petro Poroshenko, the order affects individuals and organizations operating in Ukraine cracking down on 468 companies and 1,228 people currently living in the country.

The new ban has caused outrage in the country of 42 million people, where 12 million Ukrainians reportedly use social site Vkontakte making it the second most visited site in the country. Five million more are registered on Odnoklassniki. While the human rights organization Freedom House currently lists Ukraines online freedom as partially free, this block will likely see that rating fall dramatically. On Wednesday, the German foreign ministry voiced concerns over the sanctions, adding that Chancellor Angela Merkel would raise them with President Poroshenko at their next meeting on May 20.

As well as blocking social media networks, the decree also targets an email hosting platform used by millions of Ukrainians Mail.ru the popular search engine Yandex, and the use of software from Russian cybersecurity giant Kaspersky, which has previously faced allegations of close ties with Russian security services.

This latest crackdown comes three years into the ongoing conflict between Russian and Ukraine, which began when Russia annexed Ukraines Crimean peninsula in early 2014 and quietly started sending troops and military equipment across the border into Ukrainian territory. The resulting violence in eastern Ukraine has now taken the lives of nearly 10,000 people according to official United Nations figures, and more than 1.8 million people have been displaced.

The ban is purportedly a preventative security measure in the information war between Russia and Ukraine, but it will likely put a screeching halt to vital open source intelligence gathering efforts. The banned websites often provided vital incriminating evidence of Russias extensive military engagement in eastern Ukraine. The sites were key resources for a VICE News report on the participation of active duty Russian soldiers in Eastern Ukraine, and have been extensively mined for information by journalists investigating the downing of MH-17.

The blog OdessaTalks, a site popular among Ukrainian analysts and experts, pointed out Wednesday that banning VK access in Ukraine does nothing to alter the data that already exists on the site which can be easily harvested by Russian intelligence services. Nor does it prevent access for Ukrainians living outside the country, which is important considering the European Union recently granted Ukrainians visa free access.

Not everyone is opposed to the block however. This is exactly what people were standing on Maidan for, to have a responsible government that can guarantee security and integrity of the state, and protect citizens, as well as their personal data from being used by Russian security services for espionage purposes and destabilization, says Yevhen Fedchenko, a journalism professor at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

As an example of destabilizing tactics fomenting on the networks, he cites a spate of recent anti-Polish demonstrations in Ukraine which he believes were coordinated on VK with the help of Russian intelligence.

But despite Poroshenkos firm words, the government may find it a challenge to actually block the social networks entirely. Schoolboys told me that they are not going to close their profiles and will simply go through VPNs, says Ukrainian investigative journalist Kristina Berdynskykh, and Vkontakte has already sent out detailed instructions on how to bypass the ban.

Ukrainians took to social media with memes ridiculing the decision Tuesday. In an online poll of 11,000 people on Tuesday afternoon, 66 percent said they were categorically against the ban of the Russian social media sites. Another 11 percent said it would be easier to ban the whole internet, like in North Korea.

The news is likely to further destabilize the relationship between Ukraine and Russia. Despite mostly staying silent on Kremlin attempts to erode free speech, Russian media organizations were quick to accuse Ukrainian authorities of censorship, and when asked about the sanctions, Russian President Vladimir Putins spokesman told journalists Tuesday that Russia had not forgotten about the principle of reciprocity.

Christian Borys is a Canadian journalist based in Ukraine covering conflict. Follow him @itsborys.

Cover: Associated Press

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Ukraine bans Russian social media sites in an attempt to punish the Kremlin - VICE News

Jerusalem Post Israel News

Ukraine urged to act against general who threatened to 'destroy Jews' Jerusalem Post Israel News Vovk, who still holds a senior reserve rank with the Security Service of Ukraine, posted on Facebook: I am completely against Jews, and You are not Ukrainians and I will destroy you along with Rabinovich an apparent reference to Vadim Rabinovich, ...

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Ukraine urged to act against general who threatened to 'destroy Jews' - Jerusalem Post Israel News

AFP on May 18, 2017, 11:45 pm

Ukraine delays vote on religious bill outraging Russia

Kiev (AFP) - Ukraine's parliament on Thursday postponed a vote on a religious bill that has outraged Russia because it suggests imposing severe restrictions on the Moscow branch of the Orthodox Church.

Russia is particularly concerned about the possible seizure of its churches in Ukraine.

Several thousand worshippers of the Moscow church staged a peaceful protest outside the parliament building in central Kiev ahead of the proposed vote.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also warned on Thursday that "any actions that violate the interests of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine are unacceptable."

The draft legislation assigns a special status to religious organisations whose leadership is based in an "aggressor state".

Kiev and its Western allies accuse Russia of plotting and backing a three-year war in the east of Ukraine that has claimed more than 10,000 lives.

Russia regularly brushes aside the charge despite eyewitness reports from both journalists and foreign monitors of its weapons and troops crossing the border into the Ukrainian war zone.

A member of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's ruling party said lawmakers had failed to gather enough support to vote on the bill Thursday.

"Our faction decided that this legislation was not ready for consideration," Oleksiy Goncharenko told the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

It was not immediately clear when the draft legislation might be presented to parliament.

The legislation would force the Moscow-based branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to renew its registration with authorities within a three-month period and be placed under supervision.

It calls for Russian-based churches that "systematically violate Ukrainian law" to be stripped of their registration and banned.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill said this week that the proposed bill "threatens the constitutional rights of millions of Ukrainian believers".

He added that it could also "cause a wave of violence and new seizures of churches, and escalate intercommunal conflict in Ukraine".

Kirill accused Ukraine of illegally seizing more than 40 Moscow patriarchate churches between 2014 and 2016 and warned that the proposed law would make their takeover permanent.

Ukraine is a predominantly Orthodox Christian country where most of the faithful are members of the Kiev-based branch of the church.

Followers of the Moscow patriarchate primarily live in the east while some people in the western and central regions belong to the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches.

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Ukraine delays vote on religious bill outraging Russia - Yahoo7 News

The headquarters of the Yandex search engine in Moscow. Photograph: Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images

The Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, has banned the countrys two most popular social networks, its most popular email service and one of its most widely used search engines as part of sanctions against Russian companies.

A decree by Poroshenko posted late on Monday expanded sanctions adopted over Russias annexation of Crimea and backing of separatists in eastern Ukraine to include 468 companies and 1,228 people. Among them were the Russian social networks VK and Odnoklassniki, the email service Mail.ru and the search engine company Yandex, all four of which are in the top 10 most popular sites in Ukraine, according to the web traffic data company Alexa. The decree requires internet providers to block access to the sites for three years.

Poroshenkos decree also blocked the site of the Russian cybersecurity giant Kaspersky Labs and will ban several major Russian television channels and banks, as well as the popular business software developer 1C.

In a post on his official page on VK, Poroshenko said he had tried to use Russian social networks to fight Russias hybrid war and propaganda. But Russian cyber-attacks, including its alleged interference in the French election this month, show the time has come to act differently and more decisively, he said, declaring he would shut down his pages on the networks.

Asked about the possibility of counter-sanctions, Vladimir Putins spokesman told journalists that he wasnt prepared to say but that Russia had not forgotten about the principle of reciprocity.

The sites were still working on Tuesday, but the national security and defence council said it had ordered the cabinet of ministers, security service and national bank to develop a mechanism to stop access to them. The major internet provider Ukrtelecom told the news site Novoye Vremya that it had begun the process of blocking the sites, which could take several days.

Mykhailo Chaplyga, the representative of the Ukraine parliaments commissioner for human rights, told the news agency UNIAN that blocking access to sites without a court decision is not allowed under Ukrainian law. Web industry representatives said it would take time and investment to put the ban into place, and users would be able to get around it easily. Already, VPN clients are popular in Russia and Ukraine as a means of access to sites blacklisted by the authorities.

VK, also known as VKontakte, told the Russian site TJournal that the internet by its nature doesnt have borders and promised to defend the interests of its users. Odnoklassniki promised it would find a way for Ukrainians to keep using the network.

Several Ukrainian politicians spoke in favour of the ban amid the simmering conflict with Russian-backed separatists, which has killed at least 10,000 people since 2014. One MP, Volodymyr Ariev, argued that the social media networks were a security risk since Russian intelligence has access to their data and could gather information about Ukrainian users, including state employees and soldiers.

But many internet users began ridiculing the ban almost immediately. Of more than 11,000 respondents to an online poll on the UNIAN site on Tuesday afternoon, 66% said they were categorically against the ban of VK, Yandex and other Russian sites. Another 11% said it would be easier to ban the whole internet, like in North Korea.

Some laughed that Poroshenko was withdrawing Ukraines armchair warriors from foreign social media, while others joked that Kiev had decided to ignore its transport problems by blocking Yandex and its traffic jam monitoring. By banning VK and Odnoklassniki, were basically admitting our inability to counter Russian propaganda in cyberspace, one blogger wrote in a post on the InformResist site. Many users in Russia and Belarus began listing how much they would charge to post photos to Ukrainians social media accounts.

Ukraine has previously blacklisted Russian cultural figures and films and declared the French actor Grard Depardieu persona non grata. In recent months, it has banned the American actor Steven Seagal for being a threat to national security and forbade Russias Eurovision entrant from taking part in last weekends song contest.

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Ukraine blocks popular social networks as part of sanctions on Russia - The Guardian

Ukraine slapped economic restrictions on Russia's largest internet group Yandex and other popular online firms, saying it wanted to guard against cyber threats, and the Kremlin threatened retaliation.

FILE: Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko. Picture: AFP

KIEV - Ukraine accused Russia on Tuesday of carrying out an organized cyber attack on President Petro Poroshenko's website in response to Kiev's decision to impose sanctions against a number of major Russian internet businesses.

Earlier on Tuesday, Ukraine slapped economic restrictions on Russia's largest internet group Yandex and other popular online firms, saying it wanted to guard against cyber threats, and the Kremlin threatened retaliation.

"We have been witnessing Russia's response to the presidential decree that mentioned closing access to Russian social media. The website of the president is affected by an organized attack," the deputy head of the presidential administration, Dmytro Shymkiv, said in a statement.

"The situation is under control thanks to our IT-specialists and there is no threat to the work of the website," he said.

There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin.

The Ukrainian sanctions froze any assets held by the Russian businesses inside Ukraine and banned hosts there from linking to them, though the websites were all still accessible in Kiev on Tuesday.

The ban was imposed partly to protect against companies "whose activities threaten the information and cyber security of Ukraine", the Kiev government's Security and Defence Council said in a statement.

They added to a list of more than 400 Russian firms blacklisted by Kiev since Moscow's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the ensuing pro-Russian separatist uprising in eastern Ukraine.

Mail.ru Group, which owns the Odnoklassniki social network and Vkontakte, Russia's version of Facebook, said that around 25 million Ukrainians could be affected by the "politically motivated" decision.

"We have never been involved in politics. We have not broken a single law of Ukraine," it said in a statement. It said the Ukrainian market contributed an "immaterial" amount of revenue and so Mail.ru would not revise its financial plans.

Yandex also said it did not expect the sanctions to have a material negative impact on its financial results. There was no immediate comment from other companies on the list.

"SHORT-SIGHTED"

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalists that Moscow had not forgotten the principle of reciprocity when it came to such disputes, calling the move "short-sighted".

Many of the affected sites are hugely popular in Ukraine.

Vkontakte was the second-most visited website in Ukraine as of March, according to data cited by the Ukrainian Internet Association. Yandex, Odnoklassniki and Mail.ru were also in the top five most popular sites that month.

In comments to Russian newspaper Kommersant, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova called the sanctions a "manifestation of politically motivated censorship".

Moscow has repeatedly denied accusations from Kiev that it has been waging a "cyber war" against Ukraine. It also denies accusations that it is fuelling the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine by supporting rebels with troops and weapons.

Ukraine has also accused Russian computer hackers of targeting its power grid, financial system and other infrastructure with viruses.

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Ukraine accuses Russia of attack on president's website after web sanctions - Eyewitness News