You're reading: Council of Europe: Sanctions on Russian sites violate media freedom principles

Council of Europe Secretary-General Thorbjorn Jagland has voiced concerns about the decree issued by Ukrainian President Poroshenko on blocking some Russian websites.

“Blocking of social networks, search engines, mail services and news web sites goes against our common understanding of freedom of expression and freedom of the media. Moreover, such blanket bans are out of line with the principle of proportionality,” Jagland said in a statement the Council of Europe press service shared with Interfax on May 17.

The Ukrainian president’s decree imposing sanctions on the social networking sites VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, and also the companies Mail.ru, Yandex and their services took effect on May 17. User access to all Yandex and Mail.ru services has been banned for three years.