Russia Seizes $100 Million from Google to Finance Propaganda Campaign Backing Ukraine War

Google Funds Seized by Russia

Court doc­u­ments obtained by The Tele­graph reveal that Rus­sia seized more than $100 mil­lion from Google’s bank accounts in the coun­try short­ly after the inva­sion of Ukraine two years ago. This led to the bank­rupt­cy of Google’s Russ­ian division.

Funding Propaganda Channels

The con­fis­cat­ed cash was then trans­ferred to state-owned Russ­ian chan­nels includ­ing RT and Tsar­grad, a net­work that pledged to use the mon­ey to back the Krem­lin’s war effort.

Tsar­grad report­ed­ly received one bil­lion rubles from the seizure, which it said would be used to sup­port Rus­si­a’s inva­sion of Ukraine.

Google’s Legal Action

Last week, Google filed law­suits against RT, Tsar­grad, and anoth­er Rus­sia-based broad­cast­er, NFPT, in both US and UK courts. 

The tech giant claims that Rus­sia “levied unprece­dent­ed fines and arbi­trary legal penal­ties” against it in an attempt to lim­it access to infor­ma­tion on its ser­vices and pun­ish the com­pa­ny for com­ply­ing with inter­na­tion­al sanctions.

Escalating Legal Battles

Accord­ing to Google’s court fil­ings, the bailiffs seized more than $100 mil­lion of the com­pa­ny’s assets in Rus­sia, even though the amount pur­port­ed­ly owed at the time was less than $12.5 million.

Tsar­grad has also sued Google in Turkey, claim­ing the US-based tech giant owes it $360 million.

The seizure of Google’s funds by the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment and the sub­se­quent use of this mon­ey to finance pro­pa­gan­da efforts back­ing the inva­sion of Ukraine high­lights the Krem­lin’s ongo­ing efforts to con­trol the flow of infor­ma­tion and shape the nar­ra­tive around the conflict. 

Google’s legal chal­lenges under­score the tech com­pa­ny’s attempts to resist these coer­cive mea­sures and pro­tect its assets and operations.