A Moscow court ordered Russia's most popular search engine Yandex to remove photos of an oil refinery in one of the Russian regions from online maps due to the threat of Ukrainian drone attacks, Russian state-controlled TASS news agency reported on Jan. 2, citing documents.
According to the court's decision, Yandex must "exclude information access" to the refinery's infrastructure.
Over the past year, Ukraine has launched a series of drone strikes targeting Russia's oil industry, which is a driver of Russia's economy and the main source of revenue for the Kremlin's war machine.
The lawsuit was filed by an unnamed "supervisory agency," which found information about all the refinery's facilities in the public domain. The facility's location was not disclosed.
This is the first court decision that obliged the Russian tech giant to remove from public access photos and maps of a strategically important facility for the defense industry, according to TASS.
The oil refinery plant "operates in an uninterrupted mode, providing the needs of the Russian army and navy" during the all-out war against Ukraine and was attacked four times by Ukrainian drones in 2024, resulting in damage to the company's infrastructure, the lawsuit said.
The court ruled that open access to maps and photos of the refinery "undermine the defense capability of the state" and "have a negative impact on the timely supply of materials" to the Russian army, TASS wrote.
Kateryna Denisova
(Updated: )
