Users across Russia reported problems on Aug. 1 with accessing YouTube's website and watching videos, according to the DownDetector and Downradar monitoring sites.
The news comes days after a Russian lawmaker warned that the government would deliberately slow down YouTube loading speeds in response to Google's refusal to comply with Russian authorities' demands.
According to DownDetector, the large-scale outages began shortly after midnight, when over 400 complaints were recorded in a sudden spike. The number dropped to roughly 200 complaints at around 9 a.m. local time.
The largest number of problems were reported in Moscow Oblast, but users also experienced issues in western regions like Leningrad Oblast or Krasnodar Krai or in the far-eastern reaches of the country, like Vladivostok.
At the moment, it remains unclear whether the problems stemmed from a technical malfunction or intentional interference.
Problems with YouTube were noted in some other countries, like the U.K. or the U.S., throughout the day on July 31, though not in such high numbers and before the outbreak of outages in Russia.
Russian lawmaker Alexander Khinshtein said on July 25 that the Russian authorities would throttle the video service's speed by up to 70% by the end of next week.
Russia's crackdown on freedom of speech, particularly regarding information that contradicts its narratives about the full-scale war, has intensified since 2022.
On July 12, Russian pro-state outlet Gazeta.ru reported that the Russian government plans to block YouTube entirely in September, although the Kremlin denied this claim.
Earlier in July, YouTube blocked accounts of several Russian artists who found themselves on the EU sanctions list over their support for Moscow's war effort, such as Yaroslav Dronov (Shaman), Polina Gagarina, or Grigory Leps.
Martin Fornusek
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