Just days after Russian authorities slapped Google with a multi-billion-Ruble nice for internet hosting YouTube movies essential of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, Moscow’s sympathizers in Ukraine are going after the corporate’s flagship search engine. On Friday morning, the Ukrainian cities Donetsk and Luhansk introduced they’d be banning Google Search throughout all the Eastern area of the nation, occupied by Russian forces, for allegedly selling “terrorism and violence against all Russians.”

Denis Pushilin—head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), which broke away from Ukraine in 2014—introduced the ban by way of his Telegram account on Friday.

“The inhuman propaganda of Ukraine and the West has long crossed all boundaries,” Pushilin wrote. “There is a real persecution of Russians, the imposition of lies and disinformation. At the forefront of information technology in this regard is the Google search engine.”

It’s price noting that this isn’t the primary hardline stance DPR’s taken towards a tech firm; in May, the territory banned citizens’ access to Facebook and Instagram on the grounds that each platforms “allowed calls for violence against Russian-speaking users.” This transfer adopted Russia’s personal ban on Facebook and Instagram for comparable causes—the social networks had been permitting demise threats towards Vladimir Putin and Russian navy leaders—back in March.

Referring to Google’s ban, Pushilin wrote on Friday the the DPR is solely doing “what they do in any society with criminals,” and “isolating” the platform from the folks.

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“If Google stops pursuing its criminal policy and returns to the mainstream of law, morality and common sense, there will be no obstacles for its work,” he went on. Notably, Pushilin provided neither proof to again up his claims nor concrete methods Google might comply along with his calls for.

If DPR is technologically in a position to pull this ban off, it could mark a brand new and extra aggressive step within the territory’s digital bans and those instituted by Russia for the reason that begin of this yr, which have largely focused social media so far. It’s attainable Moscow is offering digital infrastructure for the crackdown because it supplies provides and weapons to Donetsk. We beforehand famous that regardless of issuing bans on Twitter and Meta’s numerous platforms, probably the most Russia had carried out towards Google and its subsidiary YouTube was subject some fines and plunge the corporate’s Russian wing into bankruptcy. Some specialists imagine YouTube is simply too technologically refined to recreate on Russian soil and has no speedy alternative, in contrast to American social networks, which have opponents and analogues in Russia like VK.

We’ve contacted Google for remark in regards to the ban.