in a week, almost 15,000 resources were added to the registry of blocked sites. “Paper”

From December 5 to December 11, 14.8 thousand sites were blocked in Russia. About it reported publication “Kommersant” with reference to the data of the project “Roskomsvoboda”.

Why is this a lot. On average, during 2022, the Russian authorities restricted access to 4.9 thousand resources.

According to Roskomsvoboda, similar mass blockings took place in 2018 and 2021. From April 23 to April 30, 2018, the relevant departments restricted access to 13.4 thousand websites against the backdrop of blocking the Telegram messenger. Another 18.1 thousand resources were blocked in April 2021 due to mass protests in support of politician Alexei Navalny.

Who blocked resources. In December 2022, most sites were blocked based on court decisions — they account for 60% of all cases.

At the same time, access to 2.1 thousand resources (14%) was restricted at the request of an unknown agency. Presumably, the Prosecutor General’s Office is related to this, because it was she who disappeared from the Roskomsvoboda data, Natalya Malysheva, the press secretary of the project, told Kommersant.

Another 1.8 thousand sites (12%) were blocked due to the Federal Tax Service, 1.5 thousand (9%) due to the Ministry of Digital Development. Access to other resources was limited at the request of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as well as Rospotrebnadzor, Roszdravnadzor, Rosmolodezh and similar departments.

In total, from January to December 11, the Russian authorities most restricted access to sites based on the results of court decisions – they accounted for 83,000 blocks.

The Federal Tax Service is responsible for other blockings in 2022 — 74,000 websites were blocked because of the agency. Another 23 thousand were included in the register of those blocked at the request of Rospotrebnadzor, Roszdravnadzor and other departments.

Why the authorities began to block so many sites. Roskomnadzor was slower in restricting access to sites until December due to the fact that the registry of blocked sites was synchronized with filtering lists, Karen Kazaryan, director general of the Internet Research Institute, suggests.

According to Kazaryan, the reason “may be purely formal” – the departments began to deal with reports on their work against the backdrop of the end of the year.