Authors:MediaSapiensThe experiment is currently underway: providers will have to provide the Russians with access to 391 “socially significant” resources for free within three months

The Cabinet of Ministers of Russia has launched an experiment to provide free access to the so-called “socially significant” Russian Internet resources, the list of which contains 391 sites. These include access to government agencies, online services (such as delivery services, taxi calls), online libraries, sports, children’s, women’s resources, social networks (among them “VKontakte” and “Classmates”, “Live magazine”) , mail and cloud services, messengers, weather websites, news aggregators and other resources. And also most Russian state-owned, or private, pro-Kremlin media outlets. These are the sites of the following publications and channels:

Komsomolskaya Pravda, MIA Russia Today, Lenta.ru, RBC, Moscow Komsomolets, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Gazeta.ru, Izvestiya, Arguments and Facts, TASS , Russia-24, “Kommersant”, life.ru, “RIA FAN”, “View”, “Interfax”, “NTV”, “Channel One”, “Russia Today”, “Star”, “Russia1”, “Rescue” ” and other.

In total, 391 resources, among which there are no those that are more critical of the Russian authorities. For example, among them there is no “Echo of Moscow”, although the radio station is part of “Gazprom-media”, the largest shareholder of which is the state-owned Russian company “Gazprom”. The holding also includes the NTV channel.

Currently, users of five Russian telecom operators Rostelecom, MTS, Vympelcom (Beeline), Megaphone and ER-Telecom have access to the sites from April 1 to July 1, 2020. 

Recall that to provide the Russians “free access to socially significant resources” the president of the Russian Federation ordered in January. At that time they did not specify what resources fall under this definition.

Photo: epa