Russia limits access to Facebook amid fallout over war in Ukraine

Russia has restricted access to Facebook amid the fallout of its attack on Ukraine.

It is not clear what those restrictions – which did not appear to amount to a total ban or shutdown of the website in Russia – will actually involve.

Roskomnadzor, the country’s communications regulator, appeared to have brought in the restrictions in response to changes made by Facebook’s parent company, Meta.

Meta said that it would label the accounts of Russian-owned media outlets, in what it said was an attempt to limit the amount of disinformation on its platform.

But Russian authorities said that the restrictions were “censorship” and accused Facebook of violating the human rights of its citizens.

Meta has said that it is adding a “number of measures” that are aimed at keeping its platforms and users safe as the situation in Ukraine deteriorates.

Nick Clegg, its Vice President for global affairs, said that it had set up a “Special Operations Center” that will look for problematic content, and that its teams would be watching for attempts to “abuse our platform”.

But it appeared to be those restrictions on state-controlled media sites that had caused Russia’s regulators to hit back.

Mr Clegg said Meta would be “taking extensive steps to fight the spread of misinformation, and labelling content from state-controlled media and content that fact checkers have rated false”.