Twitter recognizes Russian embassy’s message that Azov fighters “deserve a humiliating death” as hate speech

The Russian embassy in the UK said on its Twitter page that the captured fighters of the Azov Regiment deserved a "humiliating death." The message, published on July 29, the day of the attack on the colony in Yelenovka, said:

“Azov militants deserve to be executed, but death not by firing squad, but by hanging, because they are not real soldiers. They deserve a humiliating death."

Twitter flagged the tweet as violating the social network's rules on hate speech. However, maintaining access to the tweet is important in the public interest, the report said. What exactly the social network means is not specified, but earlier four senior Democrats of the US Congress sent official requests to YouTube, TikTok, Twitter and Meta with a request to archive content that contains evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

“We are concerned that the automated systems and processes that social networks often use to remove posts containing violent and graphic content could result in the loss of sensitive material that contains evidence of potential human rights violations and war crimes,” the letters said.

So, after the liberation of Bucha from Russian occupation, social networks began to publish materials about the genocide committed in the city by the Russian military. Facebook initially blocked related hashtags, but quickly discovered a flaw in its automated systems and fixed the bug.

On July 29, the Yelenovka prison in the Donetsk region, where Ukrainian prisoners were kept, was struck, killing 53 people and injuring 130 more. The authorities of the "DPR" reported about the blow, the Armed Forces of Ukraine claim that it was inflicted by the Russian military in order to accuse Ukraine of war crimes and hide the torture and execution of Ukrainian prisoners. The Insider wrote that propagandists reported on the preparation of a "provocation", suspiciously accurately calling it the "camp in Yelenovka", back in June. Volunteer from Mariupol Vitaly Sitnikov, who himself spent more than three months in prison in Yelenovka, said that no prisoners were kept in the industrial zone where the shells hit. The industrial zone was empty almost until the shelling, but a few days before that, hangars were set up there and the Azov fighters were placed in them, which, as it turned out, no one was going to exchange. He also reported about the constant torture in the colony and the fighter who committed suicide because of this.

American Daily Newspaper

Learn More →