Taking on Putin through porn: how Russians are finding out the truth about Ukraine | Jemimah Steinfeld

Little moderation, huge audiences and biddable owners make porn and gambling sites a safe haven from censors

Six weeks into the invasion of her country, Anastasiya Baydachenko made an emotional plea. She wanted money: not for weapons, not for clothes, but for adverts.

Vladimir Putin had been aggressively turning Russia's internet into a fortress and, as a CEO at a Ukrainian digital marketing company, Baydachenko knew a way to infiltrate it. The plan was simple: buy ad space across websites in Russia and Belarus and use them to link to independent news on the war in Ukraine. The adverts could be direct, or they could be oblique, even titillating, to conceal their true nature and evade the censors.

Jemimah Steinfeld is editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship

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