Petro Poroshenko welcomed the European Court of Human Rights’ decision on the blocking of Russian internet resources in 2017.
“The ECHR recognized the legality of my 2017 decree blocking Russian ‘VKontakte’, ‘Odnoklassniki’, mail.ru, ‘Yandex’, and other tools of the Kremlin’s hybrid war. It is hard to say that this decision was very popular among everyone back then. Moreover, the ‘swamps’ began to churn, and the Russian agent network immediately started spraying venom in all directions,” Poroshenko wrote on social media.
“In addition, not many people were using Facebook at that time. For many, these Russian cesspools replaced YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. Now, just the memory of that makes one’s hair stand on end, right? Imagine what would have happened if the full-scale invasion in 2022 had occurred while VKontakte and Yandex were still operating in Ukraine,” the fifth President noted.
“But we took this difficult, unpopular step. Back then, a lot of dirt was thrown at our team and me. They talked about alleged censorship, repeating Russian narratives. History and the European Court have put an end to this issue: our decision was correct, and we had the right to protect our information space from the toxic influence of the Russians,” Poroshenko stated.
“We were not thinking about ratings. We acted in the interests of the state and in defense of Ukraine. Because a responsible government is obliged to make decisions that strengthen the country, even if everyone does not like them, the results come later; they will be evaluated by history and future generations, who will no longer live in a poisoned information space,” Petro Poroshenko explained.
“This is yet another reminder that in the war with Russia, there are no small things. And that important decisions regarding other information platforms should have been made long ago. 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 leaks, and the spread of Russian psyops (IPSO). Ukraine must decisively counter all instruments of Russian influence, just as we did back then,” Poroshenko emphasized.