The local court ordered 136 websites containing "pornographic material" to be banned. File Photo by Gajus/Shutterstock

MOSCOW, April 13 (UPI) -- A local court in Russia's Republic of Tatarstan has ruled to ban access to 136 websites that feature "pornographic material."

Roskomnadzor, the Russian agency responsible for media and Internet oversight, received the ruling from Tatarstan's Apastovsky district, which ordered the list of websites to be banned.


The district attorney's office found the websites it added to the list by using the search engine Yandex to search for "porn video" and "prostitutes in Kazan" -- the capital city of Tatarstan. Ministry of Culture film experts viewed the websites and determined that they contain pornographic material.

For its ruling, the court cited an international convention in 1910 in which the Agreement for the Repression of Obscene Publications was signed by the Russian Empire in Paris. In 1923, the International Convention on the Suppression of the Circulation of, and Traffic in, Obscene Publications was signed in Geneva, Switzerland, by the Soviet Union and more than 50 other countries.

Russian law states that illegal production and circulation of pornographic material is banned, but does not clarify what is illegal in the context of porn.

Roskomnadzor spokesman Vadim Ampelonskiy said it is the first time the agency received a request to block such a large number of websites containing porn.

It was not clear if Roskomnadzor will block access to these websites to all of Russia or just in Tatarstan or whether more websites will be added to the list.