President Poroshenko bans Russian social nets in Ukraine

UKRAINE - In Brief 16 May 2017 by Dmytro Boyarchuk

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On May 15th President Poroshenko signed a decree imposing sanctions on 1700 Russian legal entities. At the sanction list we can see Russian TV channels, banks and… very popular Russian social nets like VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. Also the President banned Russian mail service mail.ru and search engine Yandex. The decision is related to Russian aggression in Ukraine. In fact it was very brave step for the President since the services are very popular in the country. For instance, we have near 7 million Facebook accounts in Ukraine while VKontakte covers near 12 million users in our country. The decision already triggered noticeable resonance in society. Most likely, President Office dared for this step (three years after the war started) only backed with positive news about visa-free regime and success of Eurovision. In my opinion this decision is justified. In many cases Ukrainians just did not realize to what extent Russian influence is still present in the country. Many civil servants keep using mail.ru even when working with important documents. The harm of Russian propaganda on TV and in social nets is beyond discussion. For sure, it will be easy to overcome the ban especially for advanced users. However, major audience will be switching for alternatives reluctant to spend time on roundabout ways. We expect Ukrainian audience of Russian services will be narrowing with time.