- Category
- World
Russia Expands Extremism Crackdown to Pre-Ban Facebook and Instagram Links
Prefer U24 Media on Google
- Authors
![Photo of Katherina Popilnichenko]( "Photo of Katherina Popilnichenko")
-c439b7bd9030ecf9d5a4287dc361ba31.jpg "Photo of Katherina Popilnichenko")
Since July 10, at least three people have been arrested in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and sentenced to 10 days of detention each.
Those sentenced include a local preservationist and two candidates for upcoming elections who were targeted over past social media links to Facebook and Instagram, according to The Moscow Times on July 14.
We bring you stories from the ground. Your support keeps our team in the field.
The social media posts were published between 2018 and 2021, long before Meta was declared an "extremist" organization by a Moscow court on March 21, 2022, or officially added to the register of "extremist organizations" by the Ministry of Justice on November 25, 2025.
Russian courts are treating these years-old links as a "public demonstration of extremist symbols" under Article 20.3 of the Administrative Code, according to the Mass Media Defense Center.
The arrests on July 10 targeted local preservationist Oleg Mukhin and regional lawmaker Ivan Apostolevsky from the Communist Party. Both men received ten days of detention because of links to Facebook and Instagram in old posts on VKontakte , dating back to 2018 for Apostolevsky and 2020 for Mukhin.
The official police report against Apostolevsky claims that having public links to the banned platforms serves to popularize them. On July 14, the Leninsky District Court in Saint Petersburg handed another ten-day sentence to activist and Just Russia party candidate Yaroslav Kostrov.
His charge stemmed from a 2021 post in a social media community called "Central District for a Comfortable Living Environment" that contained links to the restricted platforms. However, his lawyer, Irina Bakhanovich, pointed out that Kostrov was not an administrator of that group.
If these court rulings are not overturned, both Kostrov and Apostolevsky will be barred from running in elections for one year.
Lawyers from the Mass Media Defense Center noted that until recently, simply owning accounts on Facebook and Instagram or posting links to them was not considered a "public demonstration of extremist symbols."
Law enforcement had previously focused only on the actual display of logos and other visual branding from the banned platforms. However, on July 3, 2026, human rights activist Alexey Sokolov was sentenced to two years of forced labor for displaying the Facebook logo in posts on his Telegram channel.
If the three rulings in Saint Petersburg remain unchanged, they could establish a new judicial trend where mere web links to Facebook and Instagram are treated as illegal symbols.
On March 28, the Russian Ministry of Digital Development considered new measures to penalize the use of VPN services during a meeting with telecommunications operators and tech companies.
Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media Maksut Shadayev discussed the implementation of fees and administrative fines for citizens who used tools to bypass internet restrictions.
The ministry also urged major digital platforms and retailers to restrict users who accessed their resources via VPNs, with some sources suggesting these policies were set to begin on May 1.
To enforce these rules, companies utilized scoring systems to identify VPN usage by analyzing IP reputations and browser data, though experts noted that achieving total accuracy remained difficult.
Discuss this article:
