"In accordance with the decision of the General Prosecutor with regard to the social network Facebook, from February 25, Roskomnadzor adopts measures to limit its access", indicated the agency Roskomnadzor, without specifying the nature of the limitations.
A few hours later, the Russian gendarme announced "partially restricting access in the form of traffic slowdown" of Facebook in Russia, as it has done with Twitter since last year.
The Russian regulator accuses the American giant of having restricted the official accounts on its platform of the Russian channel Zvezda, linked to the Ministry of Defense, the public news agency Ria Novosti and the Russian online media Lenta.ru and Gazeta .ru.
"Roskomnadzor asked the administration of Meta (parent company of Facebook, editor's note) to lift the restrictions imposed by Facebook on Russian media and to explain the reason for their imposition. The requests were ignored by the owners of the social network" , he continued.
Roskomnadzor also claimed to have observed 23 "censorship cases" against Russian media and internet resources by Facebook since October 2020.
"The Public Prosecutor's Office, in consultation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has decided to recognize Facebook as a social network involved in the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms as well as the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens".
The move comes as Russia caused a major geopolitical crisis by invading Ukraine on Thursday morning.
It is also part of a series of measures taken against major social networks by the Russian authorities in recent years, often under the pretext of protecting minors and combating extremism.
Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Twitter have been fined multiple times.
The authorities had also ordered to slow down the operation of Twitter.
© 2022 AFP