Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register LONDON, June 9 (Reuters) – Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny reprimanded Google (GOOGL.O) and Meta Platforms Inc (FB.O) on Thursday for shutting down ads, a move he said had undermined opposition and therefore was a gift to President Vladimir Putin. Navalny, by far the most prominent leader of Russia’s opposition, sees Putin’s Russia as a dystopian state ruled by thieves and criminals, where error is considered right and judges are in fact representatives of a doomed illegitimate country. In a written speech at the Copenhagen Republic Summit, Navalny, who is currently in a Russian prison, said the technology is being used by the state to arrest dissidents, but that it also gives us a chance to get to the truth. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register “The Internet enables us to circumvent censorship,” Navalny said in a speech, a copy of which was posted on his official blog. “At the same time, however, Google and Meta, by closing their ads in Russia, have deprived the opposition of the opportunity to launch anti-war campaigns, giving Putin a grand gift.” Neither Google nor Meta immediately responded to a request for comment on Navalny’s statements. Both companies stopped advertising targeting users in Russia in March, just days after Russia invaded Ukraine. Navalny won admiration from the motley Russian opposition for his voluntary return to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he was treated for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent in Siberia. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied Navalny’s claims about Putin, who says he has won many elections in Russia since 2000 and remains by far the country’s most popular politician. He dismissed Navalny’s claim that Russia had poisoned him. Navalny, a former lawyer who became known more than a decade ago for mocking Putin’s elite and making allegations of large-scale corruption, said the Silicon Valley Titans had many questions to answer. They will have to decide, he said, whether they were really “neutral platforms” and whether or not users in democracies should follow the same rules as in repressive societies. “How should the Internet react to government directives, given that Norway and Uganda seem to have slightly different ideas about the role of the Internet and democracy?” asked. “We love technology. We love social media. We want to live in a free information society. So let’s find ways to prevent the bad guys from using the information society to lead their nations and all of us into the dark ages.” Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Report by Guy Faulconbridge Edited by Mark Heinrich Our role models: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.