Ukrainian expert says it would take 'a year or two' to block Russian sites

It will take about two years and $1 billion to block all Russian Internet sites in Ukraine, said Alexander Fediyenko, the board chairman of the Internet Association of Ukraine, TASS reports.

In a 112.Ukraine TV channel broadcast, Fediyenko commented on the Ukrainian president’s decree to block access to a number of Russian-language internet resources.

"Speaking about the president’s current decree, it should be implemented when it comes into force. Speaking about further actions, they would take a year or two, maybe even more, and about $1 billion from the state," he said.

According to Fediyenko, the total ban is possible, but users are likely to find ways to bypass it.

On May 16, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed an expanded blacklist of Russian companies and individuals that, among other things, imposed sanctions on Russian social networking sites VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, the Mail.ru service and the Yandex search engine. Besides, sanctions have been imposed on other Russian businesses, inclduing software companies 1C, ABBYY and their Ukrainian subsidiaries.

Mail.ru Group said shortly after that it might lose 25 million of users in Ukraine because of the move. Yandex estimates that about 11 million Ukrainians regularly use its services.

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