You're reading: Roskomnadzor: Lenta.ru warned over publishing Yarosh interview

Moscow - The Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) has issued a warning to the Lenta.ru portal, which posted an interview with Ukrainian Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh.

“The warning was issued for posting extremist materials,” the Roskomnadzor press service told Interfax.

The press service said the Lenta.ru founder and editorial staff were warned on March 12 about impermissibility of breaching Russian laws.

It said the edition published Ilya Azar’s interview with Andriy Tarasenko, the leader of the Kyiv branch of Ukraine’s nationalist organization Right Sector, on March 10. The interview was entitled, “We are not armed forces.”

“The interview contained a link to the material ‘Dmytro Yarosh: We are Destined to Fight the Moscow Empire Sooner or Later,'” the press service said.

“The texts of the aforesaid materials contained wording that incites ethnic discord. The publication of nationalist appeals of the leaders of the informal extremist group, one of whom has been put on the international most wanted list by the Russian law enforcement authorities, violates a number of provisions of the Russian laws ‘On the Deterrence of Extremism,’ ‘On Information, Information Technologies and Information Security’ and ‘On Mass Media,'” Roskomnadzor stressed.

Pursuant to the Russian law “On Mass Media”, two written warnings issued by the supervisory body to a media outlet within twelve months are sufficient for appealing to a court for the revocation of its license.