A court in Moscow has rejected an appeal by Google against an order to pay a fine of more than 21.7 billion rubles ($352 million) over information distributed about Russia's ongoing unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on its YouTube video-sharing platform.
The Taganka district court in the Russian capital ruled against the appeal on September 9, court spokeswoman Zulfia Gurinchuk told the Interfax news agency.
Earlier in July, the Magistrate Court of the Taganka district ordered Google to pay the fine for what it called the company’s failure to delete, as instructed, what authorities had determined to be banned content.
It was the second conviction for Google, and the fine was set at one-tenth of all the profit the U.S. Internet giant and groups associated with it earn in Russia in a year, the court said at the time.
Russia's media regulator Roskomnadzor filed a lawsuit against Google in June, accusing it of repeated failure to comply with Russian authorities' demands.
Roskomnadzor’s complaints about YouTube date back to March when it demanded that Google stop the spread of videos on YouTube that it said were "threatening Russian citizens."
In April, Roskomnadzor issued the first fine, a considerably lower 11 million rubles ($188,500), saying YouTube "turned into one of the key platforms spreading fake news" about the war.
Days after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Roskomnadzor ordered media across the country to publish information about the war in Ukraine only if it is provided by official sources.
It also has forbidden describing the attack against Ukraine as an invasion or a war, instead insisting it be called a "special military operation."
