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President Volodymyr Zelensky signed the decree blocking several websites
Photo: Sergey Dolzhenko / dpa
Ukraine blocked the websites of several well-known Russian media outlets on Monday.
The decree of President Volodymyr Zelenskyj, published on Sunday, affects around a dozen Russian media organizations, including the business newspaper "Vedomosti", which is now controlled by Kremlin loyalists, the tabloid "Moskovsky Komsomolets" and several websites connected with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine stand.
In addition to the blocking, Zelenskyj also ordered that the local accounts of the media concerned be blocked.
The Kremlin reacted sharply to the measure: Ukraine was well on the way to "stifle freedom of expression" and to prevent "undesirable and inconvenient" information, it said on Monday.
Mutual sanctions
The head of the Russian Journalists' Union, Vladimir Soloviev, spoke of a "final purge campaign" against the Russian media.
The editor-in-chief of "Moskovsky Komsomolets", Pavel Gusew, told the Russian news agency Interfax that there are "modern ways of circumventing these restrictions."
Relations between Kiev and Moscow have been at rock bottom since Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula and the conflict in Eastern Ukraine began in 2014.
Since then, both sides have been giving each other punitive measures.
Ukraine and its Western allies accuse the Kremlin of providing military support to the pro-Russian separatists and of using the media as a propaganda tool to fuel the conflict.
Moscow rejects this.
Ukraine had already blocked three pro-Russian television channels in February.
Most of the 40 million inhabitants in the country are bilingual, and most people in the east speak Russian as their first language.
The conflict in Eastern Ukraine has already cost the lives of more than 13,000 people.
The Ukrainian military announced on Monday that another of its soldiers had been killed in an attack from a separatist-controlled area in the past 24 hours.
The Russian security service FSB has meanwhile reported the arrest of a Ukrainian national;
he is said to have collected secret information about new weapon systems.
tmk / afp
