Russian streaming services, literature, and schools face expanding state censorship

Russian digital platforms, publishers, and educational institutions are increasingly altering content to comply with strict state ideology and censorship laws.

An investigation revealed that major streaming platform Amediateka excised over 75 hours of footage from approximately 200 foreign series, removing more than 7,300 scenes related to forbidden topics such as non-traditional relationships, drug use, suicide, and incest. In some instances, the cuts altered key narrative lines in popular productions.

Concurrently, Russian courts continue to outlaw targeted foreign literature, recently banning the hockey romance novel Heated Rivalry under regulations prohibiting non-traditional sexual content.

In public education, newly introduced patriotic curricula distributed to schools, such as those in Novosibirsk, frame military sacrifice in Ukraine as a civic duty while explicitly criticizing Western cultural values.

Sources: Mediazona, NEXTA, The Insider, Verstka.