Six days after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, the YouTube account of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posted a new video. In a style part investigative journalism, part polemic, the video’s hosts report that one of President Vladimir Putin’s allies, Russian senator Valentina Matviyenko, owns a multimillion-dollar villa on the Italian seafront. The video contrasts the luxurious lifestyle of Matviyenko and her family with footage of dead Russian soldiers, and with images of Russian artillery hitting civilian apartment buildings in Ukraine. A voiceover calls the war “senseless” and “unimaginable.” A slide at the end urges Russians to head to squares in their cities to protest at specific dates and times. In less than a week, the video racked up more than 4 million views. For Russians, Navalny’s YouTube channel is a key source of information that contradicts the Kremlin line. It has more than 6.4 million subscribers and is managed by a group of his allies under self-imposed exile in Lithuania. It is a thorn in the side of President Vladimir Putin, and a tonic for a country where TV news is dominated by the misleading narrative that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is actually a peace-keeping exercise. Despite this, YouTube has largely been spared from the Kremlin’s crackdown on American social media platforms since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly a month ago.
via time: Why YouTube Has Survived Russia’s Social Media Crackdown—So Far