(Image: @ilya_shepelin/Twitter)

Russian authorities have blocked access to 13 sites connected to “Ukrainian nationalist organisations” on the social media site Vkontakte, Russia’s answer to Facebook.

The Russian General Prosecutor’s Office requested that Roskomnadzor — the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media — block the pages, the body said in a statement Monday. The pages promoted Ukrainian nationalist groups and “contained direct appeals to Russian people to conduct terrorist activities,” the statement read.

There had been reports over the weekend of pages on Vkontakte being blocked, but the message from Roskomnadzor confirms this.

While it is unclear which sites the ban covers, it appears a group connected to the Euromaidan protests is one of them. A screen grab, allegedly from a Euromaidan group, first shared by a journalist from Russian news site slon.ru, read: “This material was blocked on the territory of Russian Federation by a decision by the State Communication Committee” and that the decision had been made on 2 March.

This article was posted on March 3, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org