Roskomnadzor, Russia's government-run media watchdog, has formally asked Twitter to clarify its compliance, or lack thereof, with the requirements of Russian law. The agency’s spokesman, Vadim Ampelonsky, announced the government’s request today, but did not disclose further details.

On February 10, the head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, announced that Twitter fails to comply with the requirements of Russian law, including laws against the spread of extremism. “At Roskomnadzor, we’re logically starting to ask questions about the acceptability of companies operating in Russia adopting such a policy,” Zharov said.

On February 9, Twitter released its biannual Transparency Report for the six months between June and December 2014. “In Russia, we went from having never received a request to receiving more than 100 requests for account information during this reporting period. We did not provide information in response to any of those requests,” Twitter's report says. Russia submitted 91 demands to remove content from Twitter, and Twitter says it complied with just 13 percent of those requests.

Twitter stressed that it refused government requests to block some accounts critical of the Kremlin and disobeyed other demands to limit “speech about non-violent demonstrations in Ukraine.”

In the first six months of 2014, Twitter received 33 requests from the Russian government to restrict access to various tweets or accounts. Twitter complied with 59 percent of those requests.