News Flash:  Youtube is now carrying Russian media videos in the English and Russian languages!!

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I inform the Community about a dramatic development which, to my knowledge, has not been mentioned by mainstream media in the West, namely the return of Russian videos to youtube.com

Those who read my Travel Notes from my most recent visit to St Petersburg will be aware of my surprise to find then that youtube was virtually inaccessible during this visit whereas I had encountered no such problem in the past three years of war.  At the same time, LinkedIn, which the Russians had banned from the start of the SMO, was once again accessible there.  It made no sense.

It now would appear that during the period when youtube was cut off in Russia some negotiations must have been going on with the internet platform’s owners, Google (Alphabet). The ban on Russian media has evidently been lifted. Not only are current Russian media offerings available on youtube but it seems that media offerings dating back many years are also now accessible.

See, for example, the following:

RT –  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSyJEIWnjrE

The Great Game (Bolshaya Igra) – Go to the search box in youtube and type in Большая Игра. For some reason the link does not open on this substack platform.

‘Judging Freedom’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtNg8Uu1pQI&t=34s

The last link above happens to be the Russian voice-over version of my interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano yesterday.  Within 6 hours of the broadcast of the English language original, this voice-over was put on line on the Russian internet channel rutube.ru (pun intended, obviously) as was the case with all of my Judging Freedom interviews these past several months. The producer of these voice over versions is a certain Russian organization called Polit Mnenie (translation – Political Opinion).

I offer this news to break the ice and start discussion of this development in the West. I assume that others will soon provide additional remarks on how this came about, and what it may say about the lifting of censorship on things Russian in the USA under Donald Trump.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Kurzmeldung: YouTube zeigt jetzt russische Medienvideos in englischer und russischer Sprache!

Ich möchte die Community über eine dramatische Entwicklung informieren, die meines Wissens von den westlichen Mainstream-Medien nicht erwähnt wurde, nämlich die Rückkehr russischer Videos auf youtube.com.

Diejenigen, die meine Reiseberichte von meiner letzten Reise nach St. Petersburg gelesen haben, wissen, wie überrascht ich war, dass YouTube während dieses Besuchs praktisch nicht zugänglich war, obwohl ich in den letzten drei Jahren des Krieges keine derartigen Probleme hatte. Gleichzeitig war LinkedIn, das die Russen seit Beginn der SMO gesperrt hatten, dort wieder zugänglich. Das ergab keinen Sinn.

Es scheint nun, dass während der Zeit, in der YouTube in Russland gesperrt war, Verhandlungen mit dem Eigentümer der Internetplattform, Google (Alphabet), stattgefunden haben müssen. Das Verbot russischer Medien wurde offenbar aufgehoben. Nicht nur aktuelle russische Medienangebote sind auf YouTube verfügbar, sondern offenbar auch Medienangebote, die viele Jahre zurückreichen.

Siehe beispielsweise Folgendes:

RT –  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSyJEIWnjrE

Das große Spiel (Bolschaja Igra) – Gehen Sie zum Suchfeld auf YouTube und geben Sie Большая Игра ein. Aus irgendeinem Grund lässt sich der Link auf dieser Substack-Plattform nicht öffnen.

‘Judging Freedom’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtNg8Uu1pQI&t=34s

Der letzte Link oben ist zufällig die russische Synchronfassung meines gestrigen Interviews mit Judge Andrew Napolitano. Innerhalb von sechs Stunden nach Ausstrahlung des englischen Originals wurde diese Synchronfassung auf dem russischen Internetkanal rutube.ru (das Wortspiel ist natürlich beabsichtigt) online gestellt, wie es auch bei allen meinen Judging Freedom-Interviews in den letzten Monaten der Fall war. Der Produzent dieser Synchronfassungen ist eine bestimmte russische Organisation namens Polit Mnenie (Übersetzung: Politische Meinung). Ich bringe diese Nachricht, um das Eis zu brechen und eine Diskussion über diese Entwicklung im Westen anzustoßen. Ich gehe davon aus, dass andere bald weitere Kommentare dazu abgeben werden, wie es dazu gekommen ist und was dies über die Aufhebung der Zensur russischer Inhalte in den USA unter Donald Trump aussagen könnte.

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Published by gilbertdoctorow

Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.

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7 thoughts on “News Flash:  Youtube is now carrying Russian media videos in the English and Russian languages!!”

  1. I would judge this as a good sign. I imagine that utube being offline was by previous administration pressure and its return is for the same reason by the current administration. My only real wonder is how many more die before this ends

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  2. Dr. Doctorow, I’m afraid you’re being overly optimistic. YouTube’s policy regarding most official Russian media, hasn’t changed. Channels such as RT, Sputnik and others, are inaccessible up to this moment. Even some non-political individual projects such as “Sasha meets Russia”, which shares travel and life-style experiences, has been deplatformed on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. In my opinion, this is a centralized and coordinated approach towards an individual who among other things, promotes migrating to Russia.

    An other RT project aimed towards Spanish speakers Ahí les Va, has been deplatformed from the above listed platforms.

    The RT interview with Martin Armstrong is not necessarily an exception from the above rule. You’ll find quite a few interviews and excerpts from RT, uploaded by individuals. It seems that YouTube tolerates this and does not bother with it. Case in point the RT interview of Dr. Jalife (a Mexican Geopolitical Analyst), uploaded to his own YT channel https://youtube.com/watch?v=2e4dQfacqXU

    In short, US censorship of Russian media continues unabated.

    As for your experience with YouTube being inaccessible in your recent trip. There is a somewhat official explanation for this https://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/26/07/2024/66a3a9119a7947813b558ab8?ysclid=mb0nk4jf9q481056061 Truth is, this has nothing to do with Google not being able to service (or pay for) its infrastructure in Russia. This is plain and simple traffic shaping (by Russian authorities), were data traffic to YouTube is artificially constrained up to the point where watching videos becomes impossible. The implementation of these measures is not necessarily the best, as you can attest to, when you were able to open LinkedIn (once in a while it may work for a short time).

    To get access to YouTube and any other blocked resources in Russia, you’ll need a VPN. A list of blocked resources is available in https://blocklist.rkn.gov.ru/ (may not be accessible from outside Russia).

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    1. I do not agree. Something is definitely afoot here. Yes, upon closer inspection, I see that programs like the RT interview or the Bolshaya Igra are indeed not posted on some official channel of the respective broadcasters but are posted by third parties. In the case of Bolshaya Igra, what I see on youtube today is yesterday’s program that was posted by the Russian political commentator Mikheev. But Mikheev himself probably is under sanctions. He is a frequent visitor on the Solovyov evening show and is as patriotic as you can be. The logic is that he would not be allowed to have a youtube channel and obviously he does. Meanwhile, Bolshaya Igra has disappeared from rutube.ru here in Belgium which leads me to believe that some deal has been done with the managers of youtube on what can be aired where. I am speaking of course of normal internet access, not VPN. And teh Roskomnadzor article you mention dates from nearly a year ago and has no relevance to what I am reporting. This all requires further investigation.

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      1. If that is indeed Mikheev’s channel on YT (no way of knowing for sure), which was created on 04/23/07, it seems to me that it hasn’t been shutdown because it is not as popular. Considering that videos on this channel started appearing 4 months ago, it’ll be a matter of time before it is taken down. I may be wrong on this, but we can always check back in a few weeks (or months).

        Using a Proxy/VPN to Belgium, Spain, Georgia and Mexico, Bolshaya Igra’s channel does show up, but I can’t play any videos. I get a video not available message. This seems to be a restriction on the side of Rutube. Connecting from Armenia does the trick. My findings are for the Web site only, from the app it works fine anywhere you connect from.

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  3. All the above links you provided are working fine on YouTube, a big thank you for that!

    One thing that will surely interest some viewers: you can alter the subtitle language to English by opening the wheel in the right hand top corner and click on the option subtitle, then click “translate automatically” and choose your preferred language. Done. I watched “The Great Game” from 8 days ago with English subtitles for about 3 minutes and to my surprise it had more than a decent English translation (most of the time, they really s… but not here: talking about a big improvement!)

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    1. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence the Russians are going one step further. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLgwX85VP0s This is a secondary posting by a Russian outfit of the voice over of my yesterday’s interview with the Judge. Note that they have changed the lip movements of both me and Napolitano to be synchronized with the Russian spoken words. Uncanny. By all logic, this broadcaster also should not have gotten a youtube channel, but here he is.

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      1. Impressive stuff (but at the same time a bit scary too, such as: is the for real?!).

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