Access to YouTube in Russia is being increasingly throttled as the government intensifies its crackdown on alternative media. The country's censoring efforts come amid the heightened tensions of the Ukraine-Russia war. 

The country is pushing its citizens to shift from foreign-based media platforms like YouTube to domestically developed ones such as RuTube, Russia’s YouTube alternative. In August, Russian YouTube users began reporting that videos were not loading properly. By August 3, Russian state media confirmed that YouTube had stopped playing high-resolution videos on most desktop browsers in the country, according to The Washington Post.