LONDON, (Reuters) – On the same day that Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Roskomnadzor, Russia’s state communications regulator, issued a statement requesting media outlets to only report on the operation in Ukraine from official Russian sources. They could face blocking and a maximum 5 million rubles fine.

Russian authorities did not respond to this article. They have increased their censorship of Russia since then. The March 4th amendments were passed by lawmakers, which criminalized “discrediting the Russian military forces” or calling for sanctions.

A lawmaker made spreading “fake information” an offense punishable by fines and a maximum of 15 years in jail. Some international news agencies stopped reporting on Russia because of this.

Additionally, authorities blocked Twitter (NYSE) and Facebook (NASDAQ) access and also banned several independent media websites from Ukraine.

Twitter responded by saying that people need to have access to the internet at all times, especially during crisis situations. Nick Clegg is the president of Meta’s Global Affairs for Facebook. He stated that many ordinary Russians would lose access to reliable information.

Many Russian media outlets were forced to suspend their operations. After the prosecution general blocked Ekho Moskvy’s website for its war coverage, its board disbanded the liberal radio station. After its website was blocked, Rain Television Channel suspended all its activities. Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper whose editor Dmitry Muratov won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize for Journalism, announced that it will halt its operations until Russia’s “special operation in Ukraine” is over.

Even before the invasion of Iraq, internet censorship was on the rise. Major internet outages occurred ahead of last year’s September elections. These were due to a crackdown against websites that are linked to Alexei Navalny, a jailed opposition leader, and technology to bypass online bans.

According to Roskomsvoboda data, which monitors the internet freedom in Russia, around 200,000 websites were blocked by 2021. The website of OVD-Info was included in the list. This site has been documenting anti-Kremlin demonstrations for many years. Roskomsvoboda says that 46,000 sites were blocked in March this year.

Reporting by Lena Masri, editing by Janet McBride