Russia's communications watchdog told Russian media on Sunday to refrain from reporting an interview done with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and said it had started a probe into the outlets which had interviewed the Ukrainian leader.
In a short statement distributed by the watchdog on social media and posted on its website, it said a host of Russian outlets had done an interview with Zelenskiy.
"Roskomnadzor warns the Russian media about the necessity of refraining from publishing this interview," it said. It did not give a reason for its warning.
'Fake news'
The watchdog also said on Sunday it had restricted access to the website of Germany's Bild at the request of prosecutors, a step the Berlin-based tabloid said underscored the integrity of its reporting on the invasion of Ukraine.
It was not immediately clear why prosecutors asked for the restriction. The prosecutor general's office could not be reached for comment outside normal business hours.
"The blocking of Bild.de by the Russian censors confirms us in our journalistic work for democracy, freedom and human rights," Bild editor-in-chief Johannes Boie said on its website.
"And it encourages us to give Russian citizens even more opportunities to inform themselves with news and facts beyond Russian government propaganda."
A week after its February 24th invasion, Russia passed a law imposing a jail term of up to 15 years for spreading intentionally "fake" news about the military.
An unprecedented information war has been launched in which global social networks and all Western media are involved
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on March 18th denied a Bild report that asserted his plane had turned around and returned to Moscow while on the way to China.
"We understood long ago that there is no such thing as an independent Western media," Lavrov told Russia's RT on that day. Lavrov specifically mentioned the Bild report as an example of what Russia calls the West's "empire of lies."
President Vladimir Putin said on March 16th Russia was the victim of a global information war.
"An unprecedented information war has been launched in which global social networks and all Western media are involved," he said. "We understand the resources this empire of lies has, but it is still powerless against truth and justice."
Putin says Moscow's actions in Ukraine, which it calls a "special military operation", were necessary because Nato's enlargement threatened Russia, and Moscow needed to save Russian-speaking people in Ukraine from oppression.
Ukraine dismisses Moscow's claims about the persecution of Russian speakers as a pretext for the invasion and casts it as a Russian effort to expand its hegemony in the region.
