YouTube yet to comply with Russian laws for resuming its operations in Russia - minister
MOSCOW. March 27 (Interfax) - YouTube has shown no interest in complying with Russian laws, as the first step towards resuming its operations in Russia, Russian Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media Maksut Shadayev said.
"There is a number of Roskomnadzor claims against YouTube. In fact, this is about compliance with the law. If they comply and take practical steps towards unblocking domestic content, then the issue will be raised and discussed," Shadayev told the press on Wednesday.
"The company has shown no such interest so far," he said.
Despite the multibillion fines on Google, the owner of YouTube, "the other demands regarding the unblocking [of Russian channels], an adequate policy [of the company] and the absence of restrictions on Russian authors seem to be the priority," Shadayev said.
On July 24, 2025, the press service for Russia's largest Internet provider Rostelecom told Interfax that the company's technical monitoring service had "started registering deterioration of the quality of video loading on YouTube, especially in high-resolution formats (HD, 4K)." Rostelecom placed the responsibility for this situation on the corporation Google, the owner of YouTube, "which has not expanded or modernized its equipment in Russia supporting the work of the Google Global Cache GGC, intended for caching and data loading acceleration] system since 2022."
On July 25, Alexander Khinshtein, the head of the Russian State Duma Information Policy Committee at the time, said that measures to slow down the loading of YouTube on desktop computers were being prepared. "The degradation of YouTube is a forced move directed not against Russian users but against the administration of the foreign online service that still believes that it can violate and disregard our legislation with impunity," he said.
In early August, users complained that it became almost impossible to download any YouTube videos on devices connected to fixed broadband networks.
On October 23, Roskomnadzor head Andrei Lipov told reporters that the decline in YouTube traffic, primarily in fixed broadband networks, was linked to the deterioration of the GGC servers, as "the company has not supported these servers since the day it left the Russian Federation, and nobody is investing in them."
In mid-December, a new decline in YouTube's speed was recorded in Russia. According to Google's statistics, the video hosting's traffic in Russia declined by about 80% in Russia compared with early July. The service has effectively stopped working not only on desktop computers, but also on mobile devices.
On March 1, Roskomnadzor said commenting on some media report that YouTube resumed services for some users that "the service is not available in Russia."
