According to the head of the relevant committee of the Federation Council, there is no agreed position on the specific amount of fines.
Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the Federation Council commission on information policy and interaction with the media, told TASS that the senators, together with the State Duma and Roskomnadzor deputies, will develop a bill introducing “significant fines” for IT giants for blocking Russian information resources.
“So far we have not introduced fines to punish IT companies for refusing to unblock our information resources. We want to introduce a system of penalties for refusal to unblock Russian information resources that are posted on foreign Internet platforms”, – Pushkov explained, adding that there have already been preliminary discussions on this issue with Roskomnadzor and State Duma deputies.
He added that it is planned to introduce a system of “very serious fines”. At the same time, Pushkov stressed that there is no agreed position on the specific amount of fines.
“These must be very significant fines so that the price of blocking Russian information resources is high enough for these companies. It shouldn’t be a fine of 500 thousand rubles, which is nothing at all for Google. We must take into account the scale of these companies”, – the senator said.
“That is an additional tool for Roskomnadzor, in addition to slowing traffic and blocking. We want to supplement the law with fines, so as not to immediately switch to slowing traffic and so on. Our task is not to block Internet platforms, our task is to induce IT companies to fulfill our requirements”.