YouTube started blocking videos about Wagner’s PMC

Video hosting owned by the American corporation Google YouTube has started to remove videos about the Russian private military company Wagner, the Moscow Times has learned.

The website explained that the PKW is a “criminal and terrorist organization”, and therefore publishing materials about it is prohibited. “We only make exceptions for educational, documentary, artistic and scientific films if they are accompanied by the appropriate context and their publication is justified,” the support said.

At the end of January, the United States recognized Wagner’s PMC as an international criminal organization. and imposed sanctions on structures related to it. The mercenary group itself and its founder, businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, have been under US sanctions since 2017.

In addition, the French parliament voted to designate PMC Wagner as a terrorist organization. The resolution emphasized that the group “participated in the killing and torture of civilians in Bucha” and that its actions could be classified as war crimes.

In March this year, a similar decision was made by the Lithuanian Parliament and subsequently, the European Union added Wagner to its sanctions list for “active participation in Russian military aggression against Ukraine.” It became known about a week ago Great Britain also intends to recognize PMC Wagner as a terrorist organization.

In April, Ukraine’s Minister of Culture and Information Policy, Oleksandr Tkachenko, asked YouTube management to “take concrete action” to identify videos promoting the Prigozhin group. “Such manifestations of the Russian hybrid war must be stopped as soon as possible for the stability of the democratic world,” he said.

On the same day, Tkachenko noted that the company responded to the request “with lightning speed, removing Wagner videos with over a million views and the channels that distributed those videos.”

In October last year, Prigozhin demanded that the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office block YouTube, accusing the platform of disseminating “fakes”, calling for the overthrow of the government, publishing “Russophobic” and destructive content. He also asked for recognition of “unwanted” actions by Google.