European Union: Sanctioned Russian media entities and individuals’ content accessible on YouTube and Google products

Report co-author: Saman Nazari, Alliance4Europe

This Flash report is the third in a series looking at major online platforms’ enforcement of EU sanctions on Russian media entities (see previous reports on X here and TikTok here).

The EU sanctions regime

In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began in 2014 and reached full-scale in 2022, the EU enacted sanctions against a number of individuals and organizations offering support to the Russian war effort.

In addition to political and military decision-makers or military-industrial organizations, several Kremlin-controlled media entities and prominent propagandists are included in this sanctions list. Consequently, broadcasting content from these entities is forbidden in the EU.

On May 14, 2024, the European Commission further clarified that the sanctions prohibit hosting content from these persons or entities or making them available to EU audiences on content-sharing platforms or search engines.

As of June 28 2024, the following media entities are under sanction:

Some sanctioned entities and their content are still benefiting from Google services

Despite these legal provisions, as of late June 2024, a number of Google services, including YouTube, still make content produced by sanctioned Russian state-controlled media and media personalities accessible to European audiences.

On YouTube, compared to the other platforms previously studied (X and TikTok), fewer of these accounts or content have significant reach, suggesting robust and oftentimes successful efforts by YouTube to make this content unavailable to EU audiences. However, we find that significant enforcement gaps remain, which are highlighted below. 

On other Google services, notably Search and Play, sanctioned content and actors appeared easily accessible.

YouTube

On YouTube, some accounts repeatedly or exclusively post content from sanctioned entities. These channels include:

• one influential media account systematically publishing new content from sanctioned media organization RT while hiding the associated logo or identifiers, 
• two personal accounts of media personalities specifically sanctioned by the EU (see Annex I of Council Regulation No 269/2014), including one with a large following and monetized content.
• three accounts with all the hallmarks of official channels or of shows broadcast on sanctioned media (name, logo, only posting content produced by the entity),
• four accounts belonging to journalists or hosts of shows broadcast on sanctioned media entities and who frequently post content from these entities (usually hiding the associated logo or visual identifier),
• 14 amplifier accounts that repeatedly post content produced by sanctioned entities but which do not appear to be directly affiliated with them.

In addition, we found five videos hosted on YouTube that show users ways to bypass the sanctions and access sanctioned Russian Media. Another video explains how to receive Google AdSense revenue in Russia, despite its suspension in the country due to sanctions.

INFLUENTIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT SYSTEMATICALLY PUBLISHING CONTENT FROM SANCTIONED MEDIA RT

One media account on YouTube systematically publishes content from sanctioned media RT (news and shows) while hiding the associated logo or identifiers, presumably in an attempt to avoid detection.

PERSONAL ACCOUNTS OF SANCTIONED MEDIA PERSONALITIES

Two personal accounts of media personalities specifically sanctioned by the EU in Annex I of Council Regulation No 269/2014, including one with a large following and monetized content, were identified on YouTube.

OFFICIAL ACCOUNTS OF SANCTIONED ENTITIES OR SHOWS

Three accounts, each displaying signs of being the sanctioned media’s official shows—reusing the show’s names and/or logos and/or exclusively posting content produced by the entity—were identified on the platform. These accounts have low reach.

OFFICIAL ACCOUNTS OF JOURNALISTS OR HOSTS AFFILIATED WITH THE SANCTIONED ENTITIES

Four accounts, either belonging to or affiliated with journalists or hosts of shows broadcast by sanctioned media entities and frequently posting content from these entities, were identified on YouTube.

EXAMPLES OF AMPLIFIERS

14 accounts, which frequently (but not necessarily exclusively) post content produced by sanctioned entities but do not appear to be directly affiliated with them, were identified on YouTube. Most of these accounts have low reach, although some have tens of thousands of followers.

In addition, one popular channel has reposted an RT documentary, where it gathered 346,000 views.

The relative ease with which we found amplifier accounts (simple search of the name of TV shows and Kremlin-aligned media personalities) suggests that this list is not exhaustive.

TUTORIALS TO CIRCUMVENT SANCTIONS

Five videos hosted on YouTube demonstrate methods for bypassing geo-blocks to access sanctioned media within the EU.

In addition, one video hosted on YouTube outlines a method to bypass the suspension of Google’s advertising systems in Russia, including the suspension of payments through Russian AdSense accounts. It promotes a service named “Patrix,” which claims to enable YouTube channels from sanctioned or otherwise ineligible countries to benefit from YouTube ad revenue sharing mechanisms.

Influence

Three YouTube accounts have a particularly large influence:

• Afrique Média, a Cameroon-based outlet reaching millions through its TV station and which has struck a partnership with RT in 2022, has more than 1 million subscribers and over 32,000 videos on YouTube.
• Arkady Mamontov, TV journalist and presenter sanctioned by the EU for propagandist documentary movies, has close to 400,000 subscribers and over 200 videos on YouTube.
• Jamarl Thomas, host of Sputnik news program Fault Lines, has 30,000 subscribers and over 5,000 videos on YouTube, most of which appear to be filmed excerpts of his Sputnik radio show.

No ready explanations were found as to why these accounts have not been geo-blocked for EU users.

Monetization

Multiple videos of these influential channels have ads displayed before the video and/or during the video and/or on the top-right hand corner of the screen (e.g. 1, 2, 3 for Jamarl Thomas; 4, 5, 6 for Arkady Mamontov; 7, 8, 9 for Afrique Média).  

The presence of advertisements on these channels creates three possible issues:

• Advertisers might unintentionally find their brands associated with sanctioned individuals or entities, which could damage their reputation and contradict their ethical standards.
• Google has committed under Commitment 1 of the Code of Practice on Disinformation to not display ads on disinformation content and actors, which we presume should apply to channels carrying officially-designated Russian propaganda content.
• While it cannot be fully ascertained using only publicly-available data, there is a strong possibility that these channels are part of the YouTube Partner Program, benefiting from advertising revenue sharing. Should this apply to Arkady Mamontov, it would mean that Google is, likely inadvertently, funding at least one sanctioned individual.

Google Drive

On Google Drive, content hosted and streamable by EU-audiences includes one documentary from sanctioned media RT and disseminated on the official website of Russia’s Permanent Diplomatic Mission to the European Union. 

Google Play

On Google Play, applications giving access to sanctioned media entities’ content are freely available to EU-based users. These applications, which exclusively or frequently share content by sanctioned media organizations, are discoverable through a simple search (e.g. “RT, “RT documentary”) on the Play Store.

Google Search

On Google Search, links to sanctioned entities’ websites or mirror sites are shown in search results of EU-based users, including links to 18 sanctioned media mirror or official websites. Note that this list is not exhaustive, as new mirror websites of sanctioned Russian media often emerge.

The queries used to surface these websites were basic and susceptible to be typed by typical users of the search engine (e.g. “Sputnik”, “RT en español”, “RT en français”).

In addition, the suggestions that appear in the search bar when typing a basic query are very effective in connecting users to mirror websites. For instance, when typing “RT France” (a query which yielded no mirror sites on the first results page), our researcher received a Google-generated suggestion to type “RT France direct”, a query which yielded mirror site https://fra.mobileapiru.com/en-direct as the first result.

Two e-commerce websites linked to sanctioned media, along with a page on an e-commerce platform offering products from these sanctioned sources, also  appear in Google Search results for EU-based users.

Recommendations

It appears that some Google services (in particular YouTube) have enacted partially successful measures aimed at ensuring the effective application of EU sanctions on Kremlin-controlled media. However, some content and actors which fall afoul of EU sanctions have still not been consistently geo-blocked, and remain freely available to EU-based audiences.

We therefore recommend that YouTube and other Google services fully implement sanction-related EU regulations by:

• taking action on the content and accounts listed in this report,
• proactively look for content and actors similar to those listed in this report,
• reviewing all names on the EU sanctions list to ensure they do not have an EU-accessible presence on the platform.
• ensuring that the accounts identified are not benefitting from revenue-sharing mechanisms which could run afoul of EU sanctions and Google commitments to defund disinformation under the Code of Practice.

We also recommend that civil society actors alert both platforms and authorities when they identify sanctioned accounts or content within the EU.