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Until the summer of last year, Tsargrad TV, as a response from Russian Orthodox to Fox News, was a dark corner of YouTube.
The Russian-language online news channel was known for priest-presenters and conspiracy considerations surrounding the global financial system against Moscow – it confirmed its suspicions last July when it said Google’s proprietary streaming service shut down the channel. U.S. sanctions are being violated.
Now, Tsargrad is ready to fall again, following an important court ruling that could jeopardize Google’s entire Russian business, while Moscow is stepping up attempts to force Western technology companies to comply with its laws.
A Moscow court last month ordered Google to ban Tsargrad’s YouTube channel from being reinstated worldwide for allegedly unfairly discriminating against owner Konstantin Malofeev.
Since 2014, Malofeev has been under US and EU sanctions for his relations with Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine. But he told FT that YouTube continued to pay Tsargrad $ 10,000 a month in advertising money until the ban was lifted.
Google filed an appeal against the ruling on May 19. If he loses, he will face a day-to-day fine imposed by the court, which could rise to Rbs94tn ($ 1.28 million) by the end of the year – close to the $ 1.53 million market capitalization of the parent company Alphabet.
YouTube said on Friday: “Google is committed to enforcing applicable penalties and trade enforcement laws. If we find that an account violates those laws, we will take appropriate action.”
“I don’t intend to suffer as a Russian citizen in Russia because American fools do stupid things. That’s why I defend my rights under Russian law,” Malofeev told FT in an interview last week.
“If American Internet platforms can’t comply with Russian law, then they can’t do anything in Russia. That’s their decision,” he added, speaking at Tsargrad’s office, surrounded by souvenirs of the Russian empire he adorns.
Moscow increasingly sees control over its so-called “digital sovereignty” as the Internet’s foreign giants control control of Russian personal data that the Kremlin may use fears to expose its intelligence services or stage protests.
President Vladimir Putin warned this year that it was essential to force foreign companies to comply with Russian law, so that society did not “fall from within”.
Google and YouTube are the biggest targets. Imprisoned opposition activist Alexei Navalny, Putin’s most prominent opponent, has more subscribers on Youtube than all Russian state television channels and has mobilized for mass demonstrations.
Tsargrad studio. The channel has become an important vehicle for Russia’s conservative border © Tsargrad TV / YouTube
Russia is using many tools to deal with technological groups. In the spring, censors launched new technology from Russia’s “sovereign internet” – in fact running a parallel website on the country’s servers – slow down Twitter He said he was encouraging illegal activity by not deleting 3,168 messages.
Internet censor Roscomnadzor said this week he would not ban Twitter after deleting most of the posts discussed on the website, but ordered similar measures against Youtube and Facebook if they do not comply with local laws.
The anti-Russian monopoly guard is also investigating what Google called Youtube’s blocking policy as “transparent, objective and unpredictable”.
Gazprom, the Russian state’s gas monopoly, restarted the local YouTube clone RuTube and launched Russian-style app TikTok-style app YaMolodets late last year and plans to become a credible competitor.
Tsargrade owner Konstantin Malofeev told the FT ‘I defend my rights under Russian law’. © Gavriil Grigorov / TASS via Getty Images
Their audience is a part of what foreign members enjoy. Another new law mandating smartphone makers to install a list of Russian apps on phones sold in the country could allow users to make their way, according to Andrei Soldatov, a non-resident of the European Policy Analysis Center.
“They have decided to do a China tour and make analogies to all these services,” said Soldatov, author of a book on Russia’s attempts to control the internet. “Now they really have the technological capabilities to attack global platforms – to slow down traffic and do a lot of bad things.”
Russia has previously threatened to ban foreign social media. In 2016, a LinkedIn block owned by Microsoft did not intimidate Silicon Valley into complying with Russian data localization and prohibited content laws. Companies that violate Russian law were happy to pay the small fines they paid.
Roscomnadzor left the Telegram ban in 2018 two years later after finding ways to avoid blocking Russian founder Pavel Durov from Dubai.
“They were fighting alone. No one was helping. The entire presidential administration was running on the Telegram phone, ”said German Klimenko Putin, a former Internet affairs adviser.
After Putin He changed the Russian constitution last year, Moscow had more legal weapons at its disposal. A change confirms the dominance of Russian law in foreign courts when jurisdictions clash.
A subsequent law mandated that employers who were under international sanctions could use Russian courts to resolve foreign disputes. Another threat was punished for “censorship” by Russian media after RT accused the popular Kremlin of dialogue sessions and RT state networks of removing videos from Youtube. And the law introduced on Friday would allow Russia to ban Internet companies that refused to open local offices.
The new regulations would force Internet companies to comply with Russian law or exit the market, Klimenko added, adding: “It’s not a matter of collecting fines.”
Otherwise, they could set up a separate version of their website in Russia, he said: “If you want to be an international channel, follow our rules. If you don’t want to, you can do whatever you want and it will be your Russian IP [banned]”.
Tsargrad itself is quite relative: online subscribers got about 1 meter before YouTube went down. But Malofeev, a proponent of greater control of the Russian government on the Internet, has become an important vehicle for Russian conservatives.
Smartphone manufacturers are required by law to install a list of Russian applications on phones sold in the country. © Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP via Getty Images
The Kremlin wants to harness the sentiment of far-right patriots through its allies Malofeev, who will run for parliament in September.
Malofeev, who has strong ties to far-right European and U.S. figures, said he hoped Tsargrad’s court victory would inspire Western conservatives.
After the hearing, Donald Trump wrote to the former U.S. president, who remains banned from Twitter and Facebook, for suing U.S. tech companies for censorship in Russian courts and “helping to build future free speech platforms.” .
“The people of California can’t set the rules in Russia,” he said. “If they don’t let me go again, they can’t do anything here.”
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