Russia rebukes Meta for banning its state media over ‘foreign interference’

The Kremlin has rebuked Meta – owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – for banning Russian state media from its platforms, as Russia claimed to have thwarted more Ukrainian attempts to infiltrate its partly occupied Kursk region.

“After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets. Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity,” Meta said on Tuesday, amid close western scrutiny of how the Kremlin allegedly uses social media to influence elections and public opinion more broadly around the world.

Russia blacklisted Meta as an “extremist” group and blocked Facebook and Instagram on its territory after launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“Meta is discrediting itself with these actions. Such selective actions against Russian media are unacceptable. We have an extremely negative attitude towards this,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “This, of course, complicates prospects for normalising our relations with Meta,” he added.

Ukraine said it intercepted 34 of 51 attack drones launched by Russia in the early hours of Tuesday, when the Sumy region that borders the Russian province of Kursk also came under missile fire that knocked out power to more than 280,000 people.

Vadym Mysnyk, a spokesman for the Ukrainian military in the area, said Russia appeared to be pummelling Sumy in response to Ukraine’s occupation over the last six weeks of more than 1,000 square kilometres of Kursk region.

“It’s just a matter of time before they hit us with everything,” he told Radio Free Europe. “They see our successes in the Kursk operation, and it’s already close to them, so there is probably a certain fear that we will also do something in other border towns.”

Russian officials say more than 150,000 people have been moved from their homes in border areas of Kursk region in recent weeks, and evacuation of another area of the province was announced on Monday, even as Russia said it had re-established control over about a dozen settlements this month.

“With the support of army aviation and artillery fire, five attempts by the armed forces of Ukraine to pierce the border of the Russian Federation in the direction of Veseloe and Medvezhe were repelled,” the defence ministry in Moscow said on Tuesday.

The Kremlin announced this week that it was increasing its number of active service personnel to 1.5 million, an increase of 180,000 that will make its military the world’s second biggest after that of China.

“This is prompted by the number of threats that exist for our country along the perimeter of our borders. This is prompted by the extremely hostile situation on the western borders and instability on the eastern borders,” Mr Peskov said on Tuesday.