Letters from employees of Roskomnadzor's subsidiary, the Main Radio Frequency Center (GRC), with a list of potential foreign agents, as well as statistics on publications on social networks, leaked to the network. The large-scale leak of RussianCensorFiles files was studied by Important Stories together with the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
According to “VI”, the employees of the GRCHTS were hacked in 2022 by the Belarusian group of hackers “Cyberpartisans”. They handed over two terabytes of data to journalists from the German publication Süddeutsche Zeitung, Important Stories, and other Russian media.
The journalists found out that the RKN has lists of people who were considered for inclusion in the register of “foreign agents”. It also became known that the service monitors the social networks of many oppositionists, journalists and musicians. The GRCHTS, whose correspondence got into the network, also monitors publications about the image and health of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In addition, the center’s employees collect posts under the tags “PutinVor” and “Puilo”, publications about protests, and since February 24, about the war. They also monitor information about the presence of protest moods in each federal district and in individual regions. To send reports to the GRFC, they use an internal messenger, where they correspond with employees of Roskomnadzor, the Prosecutor General's Office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB.
With the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Roskomnadzor demanded that the Russian media, when covering the invasion of Ukraine, use only the wording “special operation” or “special operation”. After the introduction of the law on “fakes” about the Russian army, The Insider, Radio Liberty, Current Time, Crimea.Realii, Voice of America, New Times, Taiga.info, DOXA, Ekho Moskvy were blocked ”, “Rain”, “Medusa”, BBC Russian Service, Deutsche Welle and others. TV channel "Rain", radio "Echo of Moscow" and the Tomsk agency TV2 decided to stop working. The human rights project Roskomsvoboda reported that the number of publications blocked in Russia after the start of the war exceeded 5,000. Also, under the article on “discrediting” the army, Russians are fined, and after repeated violations, they can open a criminal case. Ilya Yashin and Alexei Gorin are already imprisoned in such cases. Journalist Alexander Nevzorov and blogger Veronika Belotserkovsky were sentenced in absentia, they had previously left Russia.
