It appears that the fines imposed by Russian courts on Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google and YouTube, as well as Meta, TikTok, and Telegram, have been settled. These companies are no longer listed as debtors in the Russian government debt collectors' database, according to a Reuters report.
However, the database accessed by Reuters still includes the X platform (formerly Twitter) and Twitch with total fines of 51 million rubles ($560,730) and 23 million rubles ($252,879), respectively.
Google, Meta, TikTok, and Telegram did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment.
Russia has been at odds with foreign technology companies over what it considers illegal content and their failure to store user data locally. The disputes intensified following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Following the invasion, Russia blocked Meta's Facebook and Instagram, as well as the Twitter platform at the time (now known as X), and Google-owned YouTube became a target for the Russian government.
In late 2023, a Russian court imposed a fine on Google amounting to 4.6 billion rubles ($50.4 million), which was a percentage of its annual sales in Russia. Meta, which was designated as "extremist" in 2022, also faced fines deducted from its Russian revenues.
