20.09 Analytics

Stopping the Stream: Why the war with YouTube is more important to the Kremlin than the liberation of the Kursk region


The Russian authorities have begun to slow down YouTube, but so far, this is more of a trial run — only throttling the stream of providers. YouTube is increasingly becoming an alternative to television in terms of functionality and reach, especially among younger generations. The popularity of the political segment of Russian YouTube does not yet compare to television's reach but is showing a trend of growth, especially in times of crisis when people seek out alternative interpretations of events.

The audience for independent and opposition news broadcasting on the Russian-language version of YouTube can be roughly estimated at 15-20 million people. Public opinion polls show that the evaluations and preferences of those who rely on YouTube as a news source shift 7-15 percentage points from the average, leaning toward more opposition and anti-war views. However, the Kremlin's problem is also that, unlike Telegram, YouTube is intolerant of pro-Kremlin and pro-war propaganda, often blocking such content. As a result, there is a bias unfavourable to propaganda, and YouTube's recommendation algorithms start linking entertainment content consumers with channels that carry opposition agendas.

Blocking YouTube is a challenge of a scale the Russian authorities have not yet faced. At this moment, it would result in serious technological disruptions affecting a huge number of people, substantial financial losses, and mass dissatisfaction among regime-loyal citizens who consume YouTube for entertainment. The Kremlin is wary of infringing on their comfort zone. However, the crackdown on the video platform will continue — the scale of the informational threat, especially during crises, is too great for the Kremlin to ignore. Yet, success in this battle is far from certain and will likely require significant time or involve high risks.

Alternative television

In 2024, YouTube became the most popular platform in Russia, reaching 96.1 million people, according to a Mediascope report published in July. This figure surpasses all other social networks, including its closest competitors — VK (90.1 million) and Telegram (85.3 million). YouTube also leads in terms of time spent on the platform across all age groups. Among the youngest group (ages 12-24), YouTube accounts for 36% of time spent, compared to 24% each for TikTok and Telegram, which share second place. For those aged 25-54, YouTube’s share is around 40%, while VK, which ranks second, has only half that amount. Among older users (55+), YouTube dominates even more significantly, with a 43% share, more than triple that of its closest competitor, OK (13%).

Essentially, YouTube has become television for younger generations in Russia. Its overall reach still falls behind traditional TV, which 97% of adult Russians watch at least once a month, according to Mediascope. However, the gap is no longer as significant. The average TV viewing time per Russian is 3 hours and 22 minutes per day, while the average time spent on YouTube, according to Mediascope, is 112 minutes daily. Yet, this viewing gap in favour of TV is largely driven by older age groups: people aged 65+ watch TV the most (6 hours and 44 minutes daily), followed by those aged 55-64 (5 hours and 18 minutes). Meanwhile, younger people aged 18-24 spend just 1 hour and 9 minutes watching TV daily, and those aged 25-34 watch for 1 hour and 46 minutes. For younger cohorts, YouTube has become the 'new television' - a provider of easily accessible content of all categories that can fill any free time.

In public opinion surveys, YouTube's reach appears more modest, but the youth shift in its audience structure is even more pronounced. In an August survey by FOM, 52% of respondents said they use the platform. Among those aged 18-30, the figure is 76%, while in the 31-45 age group it is 66%, and in the 60+ group it is only 27%. Conversely, the age dynamics for traditional television show an almost symmetrical reverse trend.

YouTube's place in news and politics

It is well known that YouTube consumption primarily revolves around entertainment content. According to Mediascope, a quarter of all search queries on the platform are related to music, followed by entertainment (17%), gaming (10%), TV series (9%), films, and educational content (each 7%). Social and political content accounts for only 4% of searches. Among the top 100 Russian-language YouTube channels by subscribers, children's and parenting channels lead: GetMovies (52.2 million subscribers), 'Masha and the Bear' (49.7 million), and LikeNastyavlog (21.1 million). Next are the entertainment channel HiMan, which features video challenges (19.6 million), and Mamrock, a gaming channel with live streams (19.2 million). The top channels by average monthly reach include A4, STS, Comedy Club, Dima Maslennikov, 'Masha and the Bear', 'Ural Dumplings', MrBeast, and Kuplinov Play.

User surveys, however, paint a slightly different picture. In the aforementioned FOM survey, when asked about the themes of channels they watch on the platform, 22% of respondents chose 'humour and entertainment videos', 20% chose 'music, films, and series', 14% chose 'news and events in Russia and the world', and another 10% chose 'political life' (respondents could give multiple answers). Similar data comes from the Levada Centre: 14% of respondents cited YouTube as their primary source of news, while 60-65% named television.

The difference in news consumption between TV and YouTube can be considered qualitative to some extent. First, television relies on a different strategy of 'feeding' viewers, forcibly mixing news and entertainment content. Second, YouTube is not yet perceived as a primary source of 'breaking' news. Russians seeking alternative, non-official sources of information primarily turn to social networks (38% mention them as a news source, according to the Levada Centre), online publications (28%), and Telegram (24%). YouTube, however, serves as a provider of 'secondary' socio-political content — people turn to it for explanations, commentary, and interpretation.

According to Google Trends statistics, the search query 'news' ranked 14th among the 25 most popular YouTube searches in the past year. The graph below clearly shows that peaks in interest in news topics occurred during the week of March 17-23, when the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall took place, and in early August, during the start of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' offensive in the Kursk region. The highest peaks of Russian users' interest in YouTube news since 2008 were recorded in March (Crimea's annexation) and August (Russian troops' invasion of Donbas) 2014, in April 2020 (the start of the lockdown), and in February 2022 (the invasion of Ukraine).

Frequency of the word ‘news’ in YouTube searches over the past 12 months

Frequency of the word ‘news’ in YouTube searches, 2008-2024

In times of crisis, the consumption of news and political content increases across all information sources.However, as researchers of modern online propaganda note, while the propaganda machine effectively maintains the loyalty of internet users and social media dwellers in normal circumstances, it becomes vulnerable during crises that undermine the worldview it has constructed. In these moments, suppressing alternative and inconvenient interpretations of events becomes critically important (→ Grigory Asmolov: Propaganda in the Networked Environment). YouTube is one of the platforms where such alternative interpretations are presented in a vivid and accessible way. Therefore, the primary danger YouTube poses to the Russian regime is the crisis-driven demand for an alternative worldview.

The political influence of YouTube

But does independent political and news YouTube significantly influence its audience? Based on its own selection criteria, Novaya Gazeta Europe estimates the combined audience of approximately 50 YouTube projects, which can be classified as part of the independent and alternative news and political broadcasting segment, at around 55 million people. (For some reason, this excludes several large channels like 'vDud'' with 10.4 million subscribers or Ilya Varlamov’s channel with 5.1 million.) The leading core of this segment includes 'Dozhd', 'Redaktsiya', and Radio Svoboda, each with an audience of 4.2-4.6 million. Close behind are 'Current Time' and 'Ostorozhno: Sobchak' (each with slightly less than 4 million), followed by 'Khodorkovsky Live', 'DW Russian', 'Popular Politics', 'BBC News — Russian Service', and Maxim Katz (each with about 2.5 million viewers). These channels collectively reach about 33 million people, though the overlap in audiences across projects is unknown.

According to YouScore monitoring, which tracks data from over 200 channels, approximately 130 of them fall into the category of independent, 'alternative' news and political YouTube, with a total subscriber base of around 110 million. Of these, 70 million subscribers belong to the top 25 most popular channels. Data on views from the past month (20 August 20-19 September) presents the following picture: the six largest projects received 1-2 million views per day, averaging 390,000 views per video. The top 25 projects collectively garnered 19 million daily views.

These figures give a clear sense of viewing intensity but do not allow for a more precise assessment of the audience. Based on various scattered data, we estimate the core audience of this segment at about 10 million people, with another 10 million on its periphery. A similar estimate was given in an interview with Re: Russia by YouScore creator Dmitry Kolezev: 'I roughly estimate the audience at 10-20 million people, closer to 20. The leader, Dozhd, has 20 million unique monthly users, about 12 million of them from Russia. I think there are a few million more who do not watch Dozhd but follow other channels. I’d guess around 15 million in total watch opposition YouTube in Russia. If we include all Russian speakers, the number is higher, especially considering Ukraine and Ukrainians'. This estimate aligns with sociologists' data: 14% of adult Russians indicated YouTube as their main source of information in a Levada Centre poll, which, when projected onto the population, is about 15-16 million. However, the sociological sample may be skewed toward more loyal groups who are less inclined to turn to alternative information sources.

Nonetheless, regardless of the size of the opposition YouTube audience, the key question is whether its influence affects the preferences and views of Russians. Based on Levada Centre data, we can generally say that YouTube users' preferences on a wide range of political issues shift 7-15 percentage points compared to the average, leaning toward a more anti-war and liberal position. The table below shows average values for the summer months on some of these topics (evaluation of the country's situation, Putin's approval, attitudes toward the war/'special military operation', and its quick resolution). In this regard, YouTube has taken the place that Telegram occupied in the pre-war years: the responses of those who used Telegram exhibited a similar 'liberal' shift. Today, the answers of Telegram users hardly differ from the average — this is the ‘war correspondent’ effect.

Political preferences of Russians depending on their information sources, June-August 2024, % of those surveyed

However, the political function of YouTube is not limited to this. At the end of August, after the breakthrough of Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region, sociologists from the Levada Centre asked respondents whether they thought there would be mobilisation in the coming months. The shift among YouTube users on this issue was much more pronounced — almost double. While 20% of respondents relying on television believed that mobilisation would occur, 24% did so on average, and 40% of those who get their news from YouTube thought so.

These figures indicate the existence of another news segment on YouTube, which is not explicitly oppositional to the war or the regime overall, but instead builds its audience through sharp criticism of government actions in specific situations. Unlike the 'war correspondent' segment in Telegram, whose popularity is also based on a fine balance of loyal criticism, the criticism in this YouTube news segment focuses more on domestic issues rather than military ones. It accuses the authorities of neglecting citizens, corruption, and inefficiency, but lacks the intense hyper-patriotic rhetoric that distinguishes the 'war correspondents'. In crisis situations (such as mobilisation), this audience and the oppositional one can converge, forming a strong wave of dissatisfaction with government actions.

Expectation of mobilisation based on information source, August 2024, % of those surveyed

Battlefield reconnaissance: why the Kremlin declared war on YouTube

The answer to this question is not as obvious as it seems. As noted earlier, in the case of Telegram, the Kremlin adopted a 'competition strategy' and ultimately succeeded in populating the social network with content favourable to the regime, effectively neutralising its political influence. Today, Telegram is the most politically charged social network, absorbing a significant portion of the demand for alternative information (according to Mediascope, 58% of the most popular Telegram channels are related to news and politics), while not posing a threat to the regime (→ Re:Russia: The Durov’s Knot). Telegram itself maintains almost complete neutrality regarding the content shared by its users.

YouTube, on the other hand, has taken the opposite approach. The formal start of the campaign to slow down YouTube came in July, when Roskomnadzor (Russia's internet regulator) issued a statement urging Google LLC CEO Sundar Pichai to unblock YouTube accounts of Russian media, government bodies, and public figures, including Solovyev LIVE, Crimea-24, RT, RBC, NTV, as well as channels belonging to Oleg Gazmanov, Grigory Leps, Yulia Chicherina, SHAMAN, Polina Gagarina, Zakhar Prilepin, football clubs CSKA, Akhmat, and others. Google did not respond to this demand. State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein stated that YouTube's loading speed on desktop computers could be reduced by up to 40%, calling it a necessary step. Shortly before the start of the blockades, Google’s Threat Analysis Group reported that, in recent months, it had blocked over 3,000 Russian channels controlled by the Kremlin or supporting the invasion of Ukraine. According to Novaya Gazeta Europe, 43% of all pro-Russian content blockades on YouTube occurred in the second quarter of 2024.

Blocking pro-Kremlin and pro-war content not only reduces its share of viewership but also creates an asymmetry in YouTube's recommendation algorithm, which acts like a 'TV schedule' guiding users across various topics. As a result, there's a coupling effect between entertainment and news content, similar to how TV works—users come for entertainment but are shown political figures like Yulia Shulman, Ekaterina Kotrikadze, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, or Maxim Katz in their political suggestions.

In early August, Russian authorities informed internet providers that YouTube would be slowed down to 128 kilobits per second on desktops and smart TVs (roughly 40 times less than what's needed to watch videos in FullHD 1080p resolution). As pointed out by a member of the Ntc.party forum, the slowdown campaign technically targets the domain googlevideo.com, through which all YouTube videos are loaded by providers in Russia. According to Google data, YouTube traffic in Russia halved between July 31 and September 14. Mediascope reports that the average time Russians spend on YouTube dropped from 52 minutes during July 22-28 to 38 minutes during August 19-25. In total, 71% of YouTube users in Russia were affected by the slowdown, according to a nationwide telephone survey by Russian Field conducted from 14-23 August.

The popular children's channel A4 saw its audience drop by 78% over the course of a month, falling to 100.4 million views, according to Vedomosti. Another children's channel, Glent, experienced a 54.4% decline. However, views of political content on Russian-language YouTube have actually increased, as Dmitry Kolezev, citing YouScore data, reported: in August, the top 20 Russian-language socio-political channels gained nearly 1.4 million viewers in total, compared to 0.7 million in June. Kolezev attributes this phenomenon to the crisis in the Kursk region and believes that the authorities' continued efforts to slow down the platform will eventually reduce the audience of political YouTube.

In August, access issues with YouTube led to a surge of complaints and a wave of contract terminations with regional telecom operators by Russian citizens, Kommersant reported. Some Russian operators began counteracting YouTube’s slowdowns on their end, prompting the Main Radio Frequency Centre to send letters to operators, effectively banning them from implementing such technologies.

However, it can be said that the blocking of YouTube in Russia has not even truly begun. So far, only desktop and SmartTV traffic has been affected, which, according to Statista, accounts for about 10% of the platform's total traffic, while the vast majority of users access YouTube through mobile connections. In the event of a full-scale YouTube ban in Russia, Mikhail Klimarev, head of the Internet Protection Society, wrote on his Telegram channel that not only would the ecosystem of the 'new television' collapse, but other Google services, including email, search, Android phones, and the Google Play app store, would cease to function. The economic consequences of such a step would amount to 'percentages of GDP', while the direct losses to telecom operators, bloggers, and advertisers could reach approximately $23 million per day, Klimarev told Novaya Gazeta Europe.

The negative consequences of slowing YouTube have also been discussed by the pro-Kremlin blog Mobile-review author Elmar Murtazin. According to his estimates, due to strict government regulations, mobile operators cannot adjust service prices, and instead, offer various paid add-ons, including unlimited internet for YouTube viewing. About 40 million subscribers in Russia use this service, bringing operators up to 2.5-3 billion rubles a month. For comparison, MegaFon's entire profit in 2023 was 39.9 billion rubles, and Beeline's was 3.3 billion rubles, Murtazin writes.

Towards a decisive battle

The primary threat posed by YouTube is threefold. First, it serves as an entry point into the Russian information space for an alternative public sphere and news agenda, beyond the reach of Kremlin repression. Second, this 'window' is embedded in a powerful entertainment ecosystem and lacks sufficient propagandistic counterbalance. Third, YouTube holds vast potential for a 'crisis-driven' demand for alternative interpretations of events, particularly when state propaganda struggles to manage the flow of negative news. This combination of threats is considered critical by the Kremlin, leading analysts to believe that the war against YouTube will eventually reach a climax.

However, for now, the Kremlin appears unprepared for a decisive battle, likely considering its costs unpredictable. The success of the initial 'reconnaissance in force' is far from clear. Notably, it has failed – or has not been enough – to hinder the growing demand for political content related to the Kursk crisis. Despite the slowdown, YouTube’s audience in August, according to Mediascope, remained virtually unchanged at 95.4 million people. YouTube continues to rank as the fourth most popular website in Russia, behind only WhatsApp, Google, and Yandex. VK Video ranks fifth, with its audience growing by 1 million over the month to reach 90.6 million. Advertisers have adopted a wait-and-see approach and are not yet shifting their planned YouTube budgets to Russian platforms, according to Vedomosti.

One of the main problems is the lack of alternatives and the damage a full YouTube block would inflict on segments of the population who consume its entertainment content and are generally politically loyal to the regime. The Kremlin is hesitant to disrupt their comfort zone without a compelling need. On the other hand, 19% of respondents in the Russian Field survey said they plan to bypass a potential YouTube block using VPNs or other tools. These 19% largely constitute the core consumers of political content on the platform. Thus, resolving the YouTube issue must also address the VPN challenge comprehensively.

The popularity of Russian YouTube competitors, which the Kremlin is encouraging users to switch to, is growing but remains insufficient. Despite YouTube banning monetization for the Russian audience in March 2022, alternative platforms still cannot offer bloggers financial incentives comparable to YouTube. In fact, the advertising revenue of Russia’s top 10 YouTube vloggers in 2023 grew by 31% compared to the previous year, reaching 1.2 billion rubles, according to Vedomosti. Only three of the top 10 bloggers saw their earnings decline. As of November 2023, the average monthly earnings of top YouTube vloggers exceeded 7 million rubles, surpassing those on Telegram (4.1 million) and VKontakte (3.2 million), according to Win2Win Communications. More than half of all influencer advertising budgets in 2023 went to YouTube, noted Anna Planina, Director of Digital Technologies at NMi Group. In mid-September, VKontakte announced a new monetization program following the Revenue Share model, allowing creators with more than 5,000 followers to earn 50–80% of advertising revenue from video views, aimed at boosting the platform's appeal.

YouTube's competitors are still not attractive enough for users, lifehacker.ru notes, since they lack the same volume of content, recommendation algorithms, and search convenience. Nonetheless, they are gaining popularity quickly. Rutube’s audience reached 47.6 million monthly users by March 2024, with a 285% growth in users over the year. According to Similarweb, rutube.ru had 288 million visits in August 2024, up from 139 million in July — a 108% increase. In August, Rutube rose to 12th place among the most popular websites in Russia, jumping 16 positions in just one month.

The audience for VK Video has also grown: since its launch in September 2023, users have installed the app on mobile devices and Android TV 20 million times, according to VK's data. In July 2024, VK Video was downloaded nearly 2 million times, and in the first week of August, the app's audience grew by 2.2 times compared to the monthly average in July, reaching 2.5 million daily users. In August, users of the VK Video app spent a total of 300 million minutes per day watching videos and streams, which is five times the figures for June, according to VK. The service Semrush recorded a 13% increase in traffic on the vk.com website in August compared to July.

Nevertheless, the large-scale 'migration' of YouTube's audience to alternative platforms will take a long time; moreover, the technological conditions for blocking YouTube need to be prepared to minimise collateral damage. For the Kremlin, YouTube is one of the last remaining untaken strongholds in the battle to create a 'sovereign' full-cycle digital ecosystem, including a dominant search platform, the main video hosting service, the top social network, a financial platform, and a messaging service. Such a combination of resources currently only exists in the US and China.

By default, Russia adopted the model of integrating into the global internet in the 2000s, but the authorities started moving toward 'sovereignisation' much later. As a result, the Kremlin has been forced to adopt a specific strategy: displacing and banning international platforms and social networks, taking corporate control of national ones (like VKontakte and Yandex), and saturating with propaganda those services and social networks that did not resist (such as Telegram).

However, none of these approaches work for solving the ‘YouTube problem’. By the time the platform's informational and political potential began to become apparent after the start of the war — now recognized by the Kremlin as a real political threat — YouTube had already grown too large. It had become an irreplaceable and universal source of entertainment content, a 'second television' for both young and adult users, a universal 'nanny' for children and their parents, a major market for Russian advertisers, a reliable source of income for telecom operators, and much more. It can now be said that in terms of isolating the Russian information space, the Kremlin has never faced a task of such scale and complexity. This suggests that the problem may not be solved quickly, if at all. The technological and ideological war on this front is likely to continue for quite some time.