The human rights organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF), before the meeting between US Presidents Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, decided to recall the arrests of bloggers and journalists, condemning the systematic persecution of independent media in Russia. Human rights activists have called Putin one of the biggest enemies of media freedom around the world.
For example, before the start of the Euro 2020 match, which was held the day before in St. Petersburg, video blogger Yuri Khovansky was arrested for two months on charges of “justifying terrorism”. A few days before the arrest, the blogger posted a video on his Youtube channel, where he criticized the arrest of the Belarusian opposition leader Roman Protasevich.
A “drug propaganda” case was opened against the popular Russian video blogger Yuri Dud.
At the same time, human rights activists noted the ongoing persecution of authors of journalistic investigations. So, on May 20, a Moscow court extended the arrest of the deputy chief editors of the Rospower website, Alexander Dorogov and Yan Katelevsky, who were investigating police corruption
Also, the Russian authorities are taking action against international online platforms that play an important role for Russia and its media. In particular, this applies to penalties against Facebook, Twitter, Google and Tiktok