YouTube in Cyprus blocks RT over Ukraine

YouTube in Cyprus has blocked access to popular Russian news outlet RT citing “the ongoing war in Ukraine” after European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said pro-Russia sites were spreading lies.

Google on Tuesday said it was blocking various YouTube channels across Europe connected to Russian state-backed media outlets RT and Sputnik due to the situation in Ukraine.

Knews first learned about a Russia Today block on Sunday, with YouTube saying in an email statement that the decision was effective immediately but their systems needed some time before being fully operational.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday announced that RT and Sputnik along with their subsidiaries would be banned from broadcasting in the bloc for spreading "lies to justify Putin's war."

RT America’s Kim Iversen, who was a guest on a bipartisan news program in the United States, asserted that some reports from Ukraine had been fake news.

Iversen pointed to a number of narratives that she described as anti-Russian, including the Snake Island story where 13 Ukrainian soldiers were reported to have died in battle after telling a Russian warship to “go fuck yourself.”

The American-born reporter said a Ukrainian border guard had disputed the deaths and video footage later showed all 82 soldiers -the 13 in question amongst them- receiving food before being transferred to Crimea where they would travel back to their families.

Another issue for Iversen was a video showing a tank crushing a car, with the reporter saying it had been reported as a Russian tank to show the callousness of the invasion “but as it turns out it was a Ukrainian tank that had lost control and accidently ran over the vehicle.”

She also clarified that a viral video on social media depicting a Ukrainian father in tears saying goodbye to his wife and daughter while staying behind to fight the Russians was in fact a Ukrainian man sending his family to Russia in order to stay and fight against Ukrainian forces.

Iversen asserted there was an endless list of war videos including viral clips made from video game simulations.

“It is tough to know even what is true and what isn’t true,” Iversen said.

Twitter also said this week that it would label tweets containing content from the Russian state-controlled outlets to reduce their visibility.

Last week the American microblogging platform said its site was being restricted or facing slowdowns in Russia, while the Ukrainian government had called on the company to block the Russian government from Twitter.