Air raid sirens were heard across most Ukrainian cities early on Saturday morning urging people to seek shelters, local media reported.
Sirens were heard in the capital city of Kyiv, the western city of Lviv in Odessa, and Kharkiv, Cherkasy, as well as in the Sumy region in northeast of the country, a number of local Ukrainian media reported.
Russian forces appeared to be regrouping on Friday for a possible assault on Kyiv, with satellite images showing them firing artillery as they closed in on the capital.
Lawmaker calls for a block on Instagram after Meta allows hate speech against Russians
Russia on Friday condemned Meta Platforms’ move to temporarily lift a ban on calls for violence against the Russian military and leadership, and an influential parliamentarian called for Instagram to be blocked in Russia.
In a temporary change to its hate speech policy, Meta Platforms will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion, according to internal emails seen by Reuters.
“Meta’s aggressive and criminal policy leading to incitement of hatred and hostility towards Russians is outrageous,” the Russian embassy in Washington said in a statement on Friday.
“The company’s actions are yet another evidence of the information war without rules declared on our country,” it said.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed it had temporarily eased its rules for political speech, allowing posts such as “death to the Russian invaders”, although it would not allow calls for violence against Russian civilians.
Internal emails seen by Reuters showed it had also temporarily allowed posts that call for death to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Alexander Khinshtein, the head of the information policy and IT committee at the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, said the Duma would appeal to the Russian prosecutor general’s office and Investigative Committee over the move. It was not clear what action it expected those bodies to take.
“If this is true, then, of course, Instagram should be blocked in Russia after Facebook,” he said.
Facebook and Instagram are both owned by Meta. Last week, Russia said it was banning Facebook in the country in response to what it said were restrictions of access to Russian media on the platform.
“They should think about how they are using these platforms. They incite hatred, and even more, they call for the murder of Russian citizens,” Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said in a post on VKontakte, Russia’s answer to Facebook.
Moscow has also cracked down on tech companies, including Twitter, which said it is restricted in the country, during its invasion of Ukraine, which it calls a “special operation.”
Dmitry Rogozin, head of Russia’s space agency Roskosmos, had deleted his Facebook profile, news agency RIA Novosti reported on Friday.
