Censorship and communications restrictions are "justified" during wartime, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Sept. 6.
The Russian government has been escalating attempts to control online communications, blocking the messaging app Signal and reportedly planning to block WhatsApp and YouTube in the coming months.
Peskov said that censorship is permissible in a time of war, while also claiming that he supports "complete freedom of information."
"In the state of war that we are in, restrictions are justified, just as censorship is justified, to be honest," Peskov said in an interview with the Russian state news agency TASS.
"We are in a state of war. But when the war ends, and any war ends in peace, there should be complete freedom of information."
Peskov's comments came on the same day that the Russian federal telecommunications regulator, Roskomnadzor, deleted a published draft of its plans to deanonymize Russian Telegram channels.
The draft, which disappeared from the government web portal overnight, said that any Russian bloggers or Telegram channels with over 10,000 followers would be required to provide their names, phone numbers, IP addresses, and other personal details to Roskomnadzor.
These procedures are reportedly designed to bring social media bloggers into compliance with a new law signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Aug. 9.
Peskov has previously denied reports that Russia plans to block YouTube entirely this fall due to a censorship disagreement with Google. Russian users in August complained of widespread YouTube outages and Russian authorities have slowed the site's speed in retaliation against Google.
In April, a Moscow court rejected an appeal from Google's parent company, Alphabet, to remove an almost $50 million fine imposed on the company for its failure to delete information that Russia deems to be discrediting its armed forces and promoting extremist content.
Kateryna Hodunova
(Updated: )
