The European Court of Human Rights ruled in the case of Boyarov and Others v. Ukraine and rejected users' complaints about the blocking of Russian social networks in 2017. Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko also called for the blocking of the Telegram messenger.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled in the case of Boyarov and Others v. Ukraine and rejected users' complaints about the blocking of Russian social networks in 2017. Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko also called for the blocking of the Telegram messenger.
«The four applicants sought to challenge sanctions imposed by the Decree of the President of Ukraine in 2017, which restricted access to the platforms VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Mail.ru and Yandex. They argued that this violated their right to freedom of expression and constituted an interference with their private lives,» the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine reported .
The ECtHR examined these complaints and concluded that the applicants had not proven a direct and substantial violation of their rights.
According to the case materials, it is known that the mentioned platforms were used as tools of information influence and data collection during the Russian aggression. In particular, more than 870 anti-Ukrainian communities with a total audience of about 9.5 million users were recorded on the VKontakte and Odnoklassniki platforms. At the same time, the platform administrations systematically ignored requests from Ukrainian authorities to remove illegal content.
The decision states that the VKontakte and Odnoklassniki platforms are under the control of structures affiliated with Russian state-owned companies. This is an important element for assessing information security risks. The court also noted that the prevalence of social networks in modern life does not mean that losing access to individual platforms automatically creates the status of a «victim» of a violation of freedom of expression.
«The ECHR recognized the legality of my decree to block the Russian VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Mailru, Yandex and other tools of the Kremlin’s hybrid war in 2017,» Petro Poroshenko commented on the court’s decision.
According to him, the decision to ban Russian social networks was unpopular at the time. At the same time, Facebook was not used by as many Ukrainians in 2017 as it is now, and Russian services were replaced by Western YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter for many. Poroshenko added that it was a difficult and unpopular step, but the ECHR decision proves that Ukraine had the right to protect its information space.
«This is another reminder that there are no trifles in a war with Russia. And that important decisions regarding other information platforms are long overdue. The most dangerous of them is Telegram. With the ECHR decision in hand, the current government can block this endless source of terrorist recruitment, information leakage, and the spread of Russian ISPs,» the ex-president said.
Earlier, the head of the Verkhovna Rada Finance Committee, Danylo Hetmantsev, said he would not support a potential ban on Telegram in Ukraine. He compared it to restrictions on social networks in Russia.
We will remind that after the terrorist attack in Lviv on February 22, when Ukrainians recruited through Telegram detonated two explosive devices in the city center, the issue of blocking the messenger was again on the agenda. Budanov, Vereshchuk and the Minister of Internal Affairs Klymenko spoke about the restrictions. However, blocking Telegram is unlikely to happen in the near future, because the Verkhovna Rada is still working on draft laws on the regulation of digital platforms, which would provide grounds for banning the messenger.
