In October 2024, 4,048 Internet addresses were blocked in Ukraine. The lion's share of the blocks fell on the gambling business. In addition, propaganda media, cryptocurrency services, bookstores, etc. were restricted. At the same time, access was restored to 7 addresses.
This is evidenced by the results of a study of government decisions conducted by the UABlockList team.
The main set of restrictions — 3,985 Internet addresses — concerned illegal gambling (by decisions of PlayCity and the National Center for Online Gambling). The most frequently blocked mirrors of the brands 1Win (over 1,015 addresses), GetX (319), as well as Jetton, Riobet, Bounty Casino, and Friends Casino.
Despite the focus on gambling, the list accidentally included resources that are not related to gambling at all:
bitcoin.com is a well-known cryptocurrency service;
HugeDomains — a domain sales platform;
Casino is a website of a French trading company;
for household and local businesses: websites of the Ukrainian pizzeria Crazy Pizza (crazypizza.com.ua), the bookstore AK Books (akbooks.com.ua) and Fashion Blog (fashionblog.com.ua);
favbet-bonus.net.ua is an address that redirected users to a discount program for plumbing and furniture stores in Zhytomyr.
As part of the sanctions, the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) has restricted access to five cryptocurrency platforms for a period of 10 years: Rapira, ABCEX, Aifory, White Bird, and MarketCoin. The blocking took place as part of a general package of sanctions against 27 companies from Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, and other countries. The ban applies to both the sites themselves and their related resources and official pages on social networks.
The SBU exposed resources that were working on hostile propaganda, after which the National Security Service blocked three news sites:
yarreg.ru and 76.ru (Russian resources that broadcast Kremlin rhetoric about the war against Ukraine);
sk.by (“Slutsk region”, Belarusian publication).
In addition, the National Council added online cinemas Tas-ix.media and Kinohype to the list of media services of the aggressor state. These sites have been found to contain banned content, films featuring individuals who threaten Ukraine's national security, and Tas-ix.media also has sanctioned Russian TV channels.
At the request of the SBU, the online bookstores hbrstore.site, akonit.net, and bookshop.in.ua were blocked, as their catalogs contained products from Russian publishers, in particular Alpina Publisher and Azbuka.
In parallel, at the initiative of the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine, 50 online stores of excisable goods were blocked: 45 of them sold vapes, liquids for electronic cigarettes and hookahs, and another 5 sold alcohol and tobacco products.
In addition, the efforts of the Center for Countering Disinformation on TikTok resulted in the removal of more than 90 AI videos and 20 accounts where attackers faked images of Ukrainian journalists.
In addition to the new restrictions, access to seven Internet addresses was restored in October. In particular, at the request of the Bureau of Economic Security, the NCU unblocked the Cloudflare Pages service (pages.dev), domain zones for creating subdomains br.com, cn.com, and com.de, as well as three gaming resources. The reasons for lifting these bans are not specified in the order.
You can find out which other sites have been restricted and who made the decision to block them in the UABlockList registry . The search works both by individual domains and by decisions of government agencies.
