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Google logo at the European headquarters in Dublin
Photo: Clodagh Kilcoyne / REUTERS
A court in Moscow on Thursday fined Alphabet 15 million rubles, according to the Reuters news agency.
According to this, Alphabet, as the parent company of Google, has so far refused to comply with a Russian law that requires technology companies to store user data locally.
The law harbors the risk that local storage will make it easier for Russian authorities or secret services to access sensitive user data, thereby simplifying political repression.
Google and Alphabet have long been involved in legal disputes with Russian authorities, for example over the extent to which they censor content that Russia considers illegal.
Putin's war of aggression has exacerbated the dispute.
Google put its advertising business in Russia on hold in early March.
It later emerged that Russian agents even threatened a high-ranking Google employee outside her apartment last September.
Supposedly no YouTube ban planned
Anton Gorelkin, deputy head of Russia's parliamentary committee on information policy, said on Thursday that he still expects Google to stay in Russia.
Gorelkin also said that the Kremlin has no intention of blocking Google-owned video service YouTube.
The Russian government has intensified the pressure on IT companies in recent weeks and has even completely blocked some services.
Free and independent information from Russia is now more difficult to access on the Internet.
Google has not yet been blocked in Russia and, unlike Russian search engines, continues to provide search results on Russian war crimes, such as in Bucha, as a SPIEGEL investigation showed in early May.
hpp/reuters