Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny attends a rally marking the 5th anniversary of the assassination of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov and protests against proposed changes to the country’s constitution in Moscow, Russia, February 29, 2020. REUTERS / Shamil Zhumatov
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LONDON, June 9 (Reuters) – Russian opposition jail leader Alexei Navalny scolded Google (GOOGL.O) and Meta Platforms Inc (FB.O) on Thursday to stop advertising, a move he said had undermined the opposition and thus is a gift to President Vladimir Putin.
Navalny, by far Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, portrays Putin’s Russia as an anti-utopian state ruled by thieves and criminals, where the wrong is considered right and the judges are in fact representatives of a doomed lawless state.
In a written address to the democracy summit in Copenhagen, Navalny, who is currently in a Russian prison, said the technology was being used by the state to arrest dissidents, but also provided an opportunity to get to the truth.
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“The Internet allows us to circumvent censorship,” Navalny said in a statement, a copy of which was published on his official blog.
“At the same time, however, Google and Meta, by closing their ads in Russia, deprived the opposition of the opportunity to conduct anti-war campaigns by making a grand gift to Putin.
Neither Google nor Meta responded immediately to a request for comment on Navalny’s remarks. Both companies stopped advertising to consumers in Russia in March, just days after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Navalny won admiration from the diverse Russian opposition for returning voluntarily to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he was treated for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent in Siberia.
The Kremlin has repeatedly rejected Navalny’s claims about Putin, who he says has won numerous elections in Russia since 2000 and remains the country’s most popular politician. It rejected Navalny’s claim that Russia had poisoned him.
Navalny, a former lawyer who rose to prominence more than a decade ago by mocking Putin’s elite and alleging widespread corruption, said the Silicon Valley Titans have many questions to answer.
They will have to decide, he said, whether they are really “neutral platforms” or not, and whether consumers in democracies must work by the same rules as in repressive societies.
“How should the Internet relate to government directives, given that Norway and Uganda seem to have slightly different ideas about the role of the Internet and democracy?” He asked.
“We love technology. We love social networks. We want to live in a free information society. So let’s figure out how to stop the bad guys from using the information society to drive their nations and all of us into the dark ages. “
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Report by Guy Folkonbridge Edited by Mark Heinrich
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