Google Adsense Will No Longer Work in Russia

• In an email addressed to all Russian bloggers and creators, Google announced that its Adsense program will be deactivated soon.
• Given the current situation in Russia, it's no longer possible for the country to make payments to Russian creators.
• All outstanding payments will be cleared between August 21 and 26.

If you are a creator from Russia using Google Adsense, we have some bad news for you. The company has deactivated its Adsense program for Russian users.

Bloggers, vloggers, and publishers have already been notified through an email that their Adsense accounts can no longer be used for displaying ads on their pages.

As for the outstanding payment, it will be cleared between August 21 and 26, as long as the payment threshold has been met.

When Bleeping Computer asked the company how it reached this decision, it said that Google has stopped serving ads to users in Russia since March 2022. However, some Russian users managed to generate revenue by bringing in traffic from outside of Russia.

But considering the ongoing developments in the country, Google will no longer be able to make payments to these users. Hence, their account will be disabled.

Creators' Reactions

A popular Russian Youtuber, Valentin Petukhov, who has over 11.4 million subscribers on his channel addressed this news and said that even though the income had decreased drastically post-Western sanctions on Russian banks, there was still some money trickling in. But now, it'll all be gone.

I was saving money on my account, and now it's not clear what to do with all this. The wording in the letter is kind of strange' - Valentin Petukhov

Petukhov isn't the only one. This move will be a huge blow to all creators, especially those heavily dependent on Google Adsense for their source of income. However, this news was hardly a surprise.

Russia has always been a difficult country for business but ever since it got into the war with Ukraine, things have gone worse.

Google Ads have been disabled on the territory of the Russian Federation since March 2022 after the country's telecommunications watchdog, Roskomnadzor accused it of spreading misinformation.

Around the same time, YouTube (owned by Google) also banned Russian state-funded channels, including those with ties to Sputnik and RT to prevent misinformation on the platform.

Russia Restricts Access to YouTube

In the latest blow to Google's operations in Russia, YouTube stopped working for several users. The exact cause is unknown.

• On one hand, Alexander Khinshtein, head of a Russian parliamentary committee on information policy, blamed the issue on Google's failure to properly invest in building infrastructure in Russia (the allegation was denied by YouTube).
• On the other hand, a report by Meduza revealed that the authorities are trying to shift the blame. The Kremlin already has a plan to block YouTube permanently by September.

Whatever the cause is, it's a huge blow for all Russian users. First, they lost the only popular social media platform where they could still freely host content by Kremlin opponents. And now, countless Russian creators are losing their source of earnings. It's a grim day for the people of Russia.

Russia is trying to build a government-controlled Internet system, similar to that in China. For this, they had banned all VPN apps from the country. Apps like WhatsApp and Telegram were also banned in Bashkortostan, Dagestan, and Yakutia regions during protests in January 2024.

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