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Ukraine Sanctions Russia’s Yandex, Social Media Sites

Ukraine Sanctions Russia’s Yandex, Social Media Sites
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Ukraine on Tuesday put in place new sanctions blocking Russian media and online networks from operating in the country, including VKontakte, the nation's most popular social network.

Ukraine Sanctions Russia’s Yandex, Social Media Sites

The decision, signed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, was announced in an updated sanctions list, which included the Russian search giant Yandex, social media sites like Odnoklassniki, and a number of Russian state and private television channels.

According to a presidential decree posted on Poroshenko's website Tuesday, the decision of the country's National Security and Defense Council [NSDC] on expanding the list of sanctioned Russian individuals and legal entities and on extending the terms of sanctions has been into effect by the president.

The appendices to the NSDC decision indicate that the expanded sanctions list imposed by Ukraine against Russia includes 1,228 individuals and 468 legal entities. The validity period of sanctions against legal entities was extended from one to three years. For individuals the terms are one year, three years, five years and indefinitely.

Some Ukrainian officials, particularly in the Interior Ministry, had called for a ban of VKontakte because it helped promote "Russian propaganda."

According to data put out by the market research agency Kantar TNS for April 2017, VKontakte was the third most visited site in Ukraine following Google and YouTube.

Mail.ru, an email client also on the block list, was the fourth most popular site in the country, while Yandex, the Russian search engine, is the fifth most popular site.

Odnoklassniki, another popular social engine also on the sanctions list, was the ninth most visited site in the country.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team

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