Alaska Summit: Shaping course of Moscow’s media censorship
By Peter Marko Tase
On a simultaneous spirit with the 2025 Alaska Summit agenda, Russian dictator had ordered radical measures to crack down on WhatsApp, a social media site owned by Meta Platforms, a U.S.-based company. As President Trump was rolling a red carpet at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska on August 15, to welcome Putin, Moscow’s tzar was orchestrating a very thick sod roll to cap off the burial of freedom of speech in his country. The Summit of Trump – Putin in Alaska further pronounced the disagreements within the Transatlantic order including NATO Alliance and the grim predictions of the Ukrainian people – cast concerning the outcome of this Summit – are becoming ever more relevant.
Putin’s subversive measures, ruthless stance against social media channels and news agencies inside Russia, must be denounced by the Trump White House, at the same level of intensity with that of intrepid defense of every inch of Ukrainian sovereign territory from Russian military aggression.
According to Danish journalist Kirstine Eklund: “Putin is once again tightening his grip on freedom of speech in Russia. Now he wants to kick out WhatsApp - but the messaging service refuses.” Alaska brought to the limelight Putin’s empty rhetoric, dirty propaganda tricks and his administration’s zero commitment to reach a sustainable peace treaty with Ukraine.
In Anchorage the two heads of state revived old – world statecraft approaches in hopes to resolve ongoing conflicts in 21st century Europe; meanwhile Russia’s escalated measures against social media sites are in full swing.
With Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a few social media sites including Instagram and Facebook – owned by Meta Platforms – have been banned from operating in Putin’s territory. Over the last few weeks, the Russian dictatorship has been implementing additional restrictions on freedom of speech and hindered social media communication of its citizens with the outside world.
It is evident that Moscow is taking serious measures to control information media and further squeeze the freedom of speech among its people.
As a counterbalance and upper hand leverage, emanating from his meeting with President Trump, the Russian dictator is looking to inject other social media options, that are controlled by his intelligence agencies, and further tightening his grip on freedom of speech across Russia’s vast territory. Currently WhatsApp has been accused by Russia's media regulator Roskomnadzor of being "involved in sabotage and terrorist activities". According to the Russian news agency Tass, "deception and blackmail" are also taking place on WhatsApp. In this backdrop, Mikhail Gusman, a senior TASS executive and a distinguished Russian Jewish journalist was fired on July 24th, after attending Azerbaijan’s prestigious 3rd Shusha Global Media Forum.
In a post on X, WhatsApp writes that the app "defies governments' attempts to violate people's right to secure communication" and that this is why "Russia is trying to block it for over 100 million Russians". WhatsApp writes: "We will continue to do everything we can to make encrypted communications available to people everywhere, including in Russia."
The Russian authorities have also accused the messaging service Telegram, invented by a Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, of being involved in crimes.
According to Yevgeniy Golovchenko, an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen and a scholar of international security: “it is not only because of the war in Ukraine that Russia will restrict access to WhatsApp. Putin always wants more control over the flow of information. It's been like that since 2000.”
In the outcast of monstruous crimes and infinite destruction committed by Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine, U. S. main stream Media are more focused on baseless rumor swirls on President Trump’s health and are not constantly focused on denouncing Putin’s aggression and his monstruous war crimes. It is no surprise that Putin’s atrocious regime was also behind the August 30th (2025) terrible assassination of Andriy Volodymyrovych Parubiy in the western city of Lviv. Andriy V. Parubiy was a Ukrainian politician and served as the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament - April, 2016 - August, 2019).
Despite all the futile negotiations, Russia remains an occupier, a terrorist state that is guilty of destabilizing the world order, hundreds of thousands of victims (both civilian and military) for the sake of Putin's ambitions. History has shown that Ukrainians will not give up on their European future. Notwithstanding of Russia's threats, the fierce opposition of Hungary and Slovakia’s corrupt pro – Moscow regime of Robert Fico; Kyiv will have a brighter future as part of the EU Family.
On August 24th, 2025, various Organizations of Ukrainian Diaspora Groups in Denmark and Ireland commemorated the 34th Independence Day of Ukraine. These symbolic and memorable events organized in Ireland and Denmark are testimony of Ukrainian people’s deep commitment with their homeland and represent the best geopolitical message that Russian Forces are the OCCUPIERS of Europe, and certainly Moscow’s Oligarchy is growingly unpopular among the Russian population.
Putin’s revenge on Europe aims to spill rivers of blood of his countrymen, for the sake of his imperial ambitions. Killing thousands of people, on average five thousand civilians and military personnel every single week. Russian dictator’s thirst for endless imperial power is destroying foreign cities, conducting arms race and forcefully abducting over twenty thousand Ukrainian kids. Putin and his cronies are doomed to fail, as the Ukrainian Armed Forces continue to heroically defend their homeland by inflicting endless casualties to Russian Forces.
No matter what Moscow aligned EU leaders - Viktor Orbán and Robert Fico – have in mind, the Ukrainian people will NEVER retreat from their freedom, preservation of values on the European path of development. The future of Ukraine is in the European family!
Ukraine’s Act of Declaration of Independence on August 24, 1991, was equally as symbolic and heroic in gesture, as its nation genuinely separated itself from the cruelty of Soviet collectivization and from Stalin’s ruthless Holodomor terror famine of 1932-33.
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY OF UKRAINE!
Source:
https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/udland/whatsapp-rusland-proever-blokere-os
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/beyond-the-alaska-summit/
