Roskomnadzor blocked a podcast about foreign agents and families of fighters in Ukraine

Roskomnadzor required audio services to block access to the podcast “Hello, you are a foreign agent” by journalists Sonya Groisman and Olga Churakova. This happened after the release of the new season of “Sisters”, which tells about the families of Russians fighting in Ukraine. This is stated in the telegram channel of the podcast.

“Hello, you are a foreign agent” has been published since 2021, it was launched after the Russian Ministry of Justice included the authors in the list of so-called foreign agents. In the third season, the podcast talked about the war in Ukraine. The fourth, launched in mid-October, records the stories of family members of the participants in the invasion of Ukraine, who talk about how participation in the war affects the military and their loved ones.

The podcast has already been blocked by the Yandex Music service. Roskomnadzor’s notice, sent to Yandex and republished on the podcast channel, states that the authors are distributing “information materials aimed at destabilizing the public and political situation” and contain “unreliable publicly significant information distributed under the guise of credible messages.”

After the start of the war in 2022, the Kremlin actually introduced military censorship in Russia. Administrative and criminal articles were added to the legislation, prohibiting coverage of the invasion of Ukraine – the laws call it the protection of the army from discrediting and the protection of citizens from the spread of false information.

Several large mass media, including “Novaya Gazeta” and Znak.com, stopped publication, not finding the opportunity to work under the conditions of censorship. Dozens of publishers were forced to move editorial offices abroad, hundreds of employees were forced to emigrate. Thousands of sites covering events in Ukraine or related news from Russia have been blocked.