According to the TASS Russian news agency, Russia blocks its people from accessing Facebook. TASS said that the Russian government had accused Facebook of having committed 26 acts of anti-Russian discrimination before the March 4 decision to block the social media company.

The New York Times said the decision was part of a campaign to silence opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the War in Ukraine. The campaign included closing independent broadcasters and criminalizing the spread of information that the government considered false, the paper said.

Soon after the decision to block Facebook was announced, the government said it was "restricting" access to Twitter, according to The Guardian. The extent of the restrictions was not clear. CNBC quoted a Twitter spokesperson as saying that there had been earlier reports of some Russians being unable to access Twitter and "we don't currently see anything significantly different." The Moscow Times said there had been reports that AFP could not refresh its Twitter feed in Russia.

Government stops radio from presenting 'a different picture'

On March 3, The New York Times reported that the government had forced a liberal radio station to go off the air. The station, Echo of Moscow, had been "a symbol of the country's newfound freedom" after the fall of communism, wrote Times reporter Anton Troianovski.

At the time, Troianovski said it was possible that the station might turn to YouTube to make future programs available to Russians.

Echo of Moscow Editor-in-Chief Alexei Venediktov told PBS NewsHour, "We effectively have military censorship and martial law, or at least martial law for the media." Venediktov said he did not believe his station would return to the air waves.

He also raised the possibility of distributing programs on USB sticks.

"We have been presenting a little different picture than the state media. There's only supposed to be one picture," he told PBS NewsHour. The American public broadcaster noted that the Echo of Moscow had been on the air for 32 years.

On March 3, AFP reported that TV channel Dozhd had announced a temporary halt to its broadcasts following a government order to stop broadcasting.

The order had come as a response to the channel's reporting on the situation in Ukraine, AFP said.

The Moscow Times, a Russian English-language news outlet, was still online on March 4. It has reported about the Russian government's repressive measures.

Muratov: If it's not propaganda, it's not allowed

The New York Times said Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitri A. Muratov had expressed fears that his paper Novaya Gazeta would be shut down. On March 3, The New York Times quoted him as saying, "Everything that's not propaganda is being eliminated."

The law against 'fake news' hinders foreign journalists

In response to a new Russian law against 'fake news,' journalists for the BBC and Bloomberg had stopped reporting there, The Guardian reported on March 4.

The paper said that the law, which made it possible to imprison violators for as long as15 years, had also prompted CNN to discontinue its broadcasts in Russia.

The New York Times said the law would go into effect on March 5. Under the law, saying that the Russian military was engaged in a "war" in Ukraine would be forbidden, the paper said. The paper said the legally acceptable term for Russia's presence in the neighboring country was "special military operation," the paper said.

On March 4, Human Rights Watch said the Russian Ministry was subjecting schoolchildren to war propaganda. In a post on Twitter, the organization placed a link to a report that said Russian teachers had received instructions on handling awkward questions from students.

In addition, the report said teachers had been told to deny that there was a war in Ukraine.

Teachers had been told to tell their students that Russia was carrying out a "special peacekeeping operation" to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine, Human Rights Watch said.
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