Paresh David

(Reuters) – Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ) Inc’s Google and Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc face possible punitive sanctions in Russia. They failed to open offices locally and took other necessary measures as required under a Russian communications law.

Russian law signed by President Vladimir Putin obliges foreign social media platforms with more than 500k daily users to establish local offices in Russia.

Roskomnadzor the Russian state communications regulator, had listed 13 companies in November that they wanted to open on Russian soil. Last month, it stated it was going to start restricting Russian businesses by February.

Only a handful of people had submitted their documents by Monday’s deadline. Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine has increased pressure on Western companies to respond to Putin.

New rules require that companies register with Roskomnadzor, the Russian telecom regulator. They also need to have a system in place for handling user complaints.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: Spotify Technology SA (NYSE 🙂 had already complied with all requirements before violence broke out in Ukraine. Roskomnadzor’s site on Monday showed that Rakuten Group Inc’s messaging application Viber had also been completed.

Six companies, however, had met at least one of the policies but not set up a local Russian office or legal entity. Those were Google, Meta, Twitter Inc (NYSE:), ByteDance’s TikTok, Zoom Video Communications (NASDAQ) Inc, JOYY(NASDAQ:) Inc’s video app Likee, which was shown late Monday on the government website.

The website stated that four companies – Discord Chat, Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ)’s live streaming service Twitch and Telegram Messaging App (NYSE) Inc – have not made any compliance steps.

Likee indicated that the Feb. 16 Russian filing for a legal entity to be formed is being reviewed and plans to adhere to Russian law. Twitter refused to comment, while 11 other companies didn’t respond to our requests.

Roskomnadzor stated last month it would start banning companies selling Russian ads that are not in compliance. It has previously said that it would only block access to targeted services as a last resort. Other penalties might include the limitation of data collection or money transfers.

This regulation forms part of an overall campaign to control internet access that is being criticized as threatening individual freedom and corporate liberty. Russia’s authorities have given small fines to companies that use social media in Russia in response to their requests to restrict anti-government information and activists.

Russia calls the actions it took in Ukraine “special operations” and has restricted access to Facebook since recent days. This was in response to state media services being censored, critics claim, that they promote propaganda and fake news. Twitter is also difficult to use on mobile devices.

The latest Russian crackdown has led to a rise in the demand for VPN (virtual private networking) apps. This can allow you to bypass internet restrictions. On Monday, VPNs accounted for three of the five most popular apps downloaded from Apple’s App Store. Their combined total of 383,000 installations over the seven days was 15 percent more than in the preceding seven-days according to Sensor Tower.

Russia has an estimated population of 144 million people. According to Insider Intelligence, there were nearly 51 million Instagram users and 7.5million Facebook users as of November 2013.