Russia says it will not impose internet regulations as China

Addressing growing dissent over new censorship law, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Friday (local time) said Russia would not impose regulations as China.

"Of course, we will not have such regulation as in China. I will even say more -- even in China this regulation often does not bring, perhaps, the results to which it was originally oriented. Moreover, we do not strive for such regulation, no firewall appears here", Sputnik quoted Medvedev as saying.

The Russian Government recently passed a new censorship law that allows it to target individuals and website for spreading fake news and disrespecting state symbols.

Clarifying that recent law was aimed to make Russians internet sustainable, he said, "We need to protect our interests, not so that we don't disconnect something, but so that we are not disconnected. That is also possible. After all, the Internet is not just a stream of news, it is a huge number of technologies, it is an industrial Internet, a medical Internet. And what if at some point we find ourselves being cut off from another world?".

China government has always been criticised over its censorship over the internet. That includes cracking down on foreign internet products, including blocks on Instagram and WhatsApp in recent years.