The Ukrainian authorities are not abandoning their plans to restrict the use of the Telegram messenger. Earlier this year, a representative of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine saidthat Telegram poses a number of threats to Ukraine’s security.
Later, the head of the National Council of Ukraine on Television and Radio Broadcasting said on the need for fines and state control over Telegram’s activities in Ukraine. And now the National Council expressed hopes for a complete blocking of the messenger in Ukraine and told how she has already restricted it in her network.
The National Council notes that they need to protect proprietary information from Telegram, and at the same time «continue to control the media space», which includes Telegram. Therefore, the National Council has introduced a number of restrictions on the messenger’s operation at the local level:
«Our network infrastructure already allows us to block each of the tens of thousands of IP addresses used by this social network, so the information held by the National Council is reliably protected,» the agency’s press service says.
At the same time, the National Council hopes that these partial restrictions are temporary, and that Telegram will soon be completely blocked in Ukraine, as it has been with other Russian social networks.
«We hope that the current state of counteracting the risks associated with the use of this social network by government agencies is intermediate, and soon Telegram will be completely blocked in Ukraine, as it was once blocked «Odnoklassniki», «VKontakte» and all services of Yandex and Mail.ru», the National Council concludes.
UPDATED: A representative of Telegram commented to the ITC.UA editors about the phrase about “other Russian social networks”. He noted that such wording can be perceived as the fact that Telegram is a Russian service. But it is not so.
“Telegram has no employees, equipment or offices in Russia and has never been legally or physically connected to Russia. Telegram is located in Dubai.”
