The Presidential Decree of P. Poroshenko №133 of 15 May 2017 forbids Internet providers to provide access to the Russian websites like Mail.ru, VK.com, OK.RU and resources of “Yandex”. The latter incorporate such services as “Yandex Air Tickets”, “Yandex Money”, “Yandex Webmaster”, “auto.ru”, “Yandex Direct”, “Yandex Poster”, “Yandex Audiences”, “Yandex Video”, “Yandex Time”, “Yandex Disk”, “Yandex Maps”, and others.
At the moment, it is not evident how providers will execute this decree technically and legally.
Yury Krainyak, Managing Partner of Jurimex:
“This decision raises a lot of questions. The sanctions are imposed against violators, and restrictions must be also imposed against them. But in this case, providers are under no obligation to fulfill this decree, since there exists the Law “On Telecom”, which stipulates that providers are not liable for the traffic content. And “prohibiting Internet providers from providing online users with access to the resources of the above services” means that these restrictions are imposed not against the offending sites, but against the Ukrainian service providers and Ukrainian subscribers to these providers’ services. The procedures are most likely to be established by bylaws, as it was, for example, with sanctions in the banking sector”.
