The child, who the Kyiv Independent has chosen not to identify, allegedly put up posters titled "Heroes of Russia" with photos of Denis Kapustin and Aleksiy Levkin on Dec. 26. Kapustin and Levkin are fighters in the Russian Volunteer Corps, a militant group established by Kapustin who has fought alongside Ukraine and opposes the rule of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The possible blocking of calls is being justified by authorities as a crackdown on anti-fraud calls.
WhatsApp is the only Meta service that has not yet been blocked in Russia.
Steam, which has an online catalog of more than 100,000 games and is used by around 130 million users around the world, including close to 10 million in Russia, agreed to comply with legislation, the federal censorship agency Roskomnadzor told Interfax.
Russia's Investigative Committee reportedly alleged that Kirill Martynov, chief editor of Novaya Gazeta Europe, was "conducting activities of an undesirable organization."
Although Russian authorities linked the problems to a cyberattack, the news follows a string of cases of the Russian government restricting the Signal messaging app and reportedly targeting YouTube.
The law on "undesirable" organizations has existed since 2015 and has been used to target perceived opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime, including NGOs, independent media outlets, human rights groups, and others.
Russia will deliberately slow YouTube loading speeds by up to 70% by the end of next week, in response to Google's refusal to comply with the demands of the Russian authorities, Russian lawmaker Alexander Khinshtein said on July 25.
The prosecutor's office justified their decision by claiming that the work of the Moscow Times is "is aimed at discrediting the decisions of Russia's leadership in both foreign and domestic policy."
Despite public pressure and condemnation from as high up as President Volodymyr Zelensky, the investigations have yet to lead to any tangible results.
Ukrainian journalists and media watchdogs are continuing to voice concerns over declining press freedoms as their country’s army fights on more than two years into Russia’s full-scale invasion to protect the future of the democracy. Months after attacks on investigative journalists provoked a public outcry and condemnation, media
