Kazakhstan's Vlast.kz news website has refused to follow a request from Russia's media regulator, Roskomnadzor, to delete two reports about Moscow's ongoing unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Vlast.kz said in a statement on December 13 that Roskomnadzor requested that it delete reports about the shelling of the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsya by Russian armed forces and about the victims of Russia's siege of the city of Mariupol.
"Vlast is a media outlet of Kazakhstan; its operations are not regulated by Russian laws and regulators. The editorial board is not going to delete the report in question, or any other news related to the war in Ukraine and will continue to cover it no matter what any Russian entity responsible for military censorship thinks about it," the statement said.
Last month, another Kazakh website, Arbat.media, refused to delete its report about setbacks being suffered by Russian armed forces in Ukraine's Kharkiv region.
In August, Roskomnadzor made a similar request, which was also rejected by Kazakhstan's Ratel.kz news website.
Meanwhile, Kazakhstan’s Newtimes.kz followed Roskomnadzor's request to delete its report about Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its aggression against Ukraine earlier this year, saying that it did not want to lose its audience in Russia, where it could be blocked.
After launching its wide-scale aggression against Ukraine in February, Russian authorities have demanded that media in Russia base their reports only on official statements. They were also informed that they could only call the invasion " a special military operation" and not a war.
Since then, dozens of independent websites and thousands of social media accounts, as well as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, have been blocked in Russia over reports about the war in Ukraine.