Last week, Netflix turned part of the English city of Bradford into a slice of Russia. The streaming giant was filming scenes for The Crown and was reportedly re-creating a trip the Queen and Prince Philip took to the Kremlin in 1994—the first visit by a British monarch to the seat of Russian power.
It’s doubtful anyone in Russia will ever actually see those scenes, though. On the same day photos from the shoot emerged, Politico reported that starting March 1, Netflix would be legally obliged to broadcast 20 free-to-air Russian television stations if it wanted to continue to operate in the country. The channels are a mix of news, sports, and entertainment—and under what is known colloquially as the Vitrina TV law (named after an online platform of the same name that launched in 2017), all streaming platforms with more than 100,000 Russian users have to offer them as part of their services.
That’s a problem for Netflix—Russia’s state-funded media is awash with propaganda, and carries an unhealthy dose of misinformation about the brutal invasion of Ukraine, which journalists in Russia are banned from calling a war. News that Netflix would likely be forced to broadcast Russian propaganda sparked a furious response from subscribers in the West, with hundreds taking to Twitter, and some terminating their membership. “I canceled my subscription because I don’t want to support a company that is helping to spread disinformation to justify Putin’s invasion,” says Martta Tervonen, a writer from Finland who had been a Netflix customer for 10 years. Netflix was in something of a bind: fail to comply with the law and it would risk being banned in Russia; comply and it would likely be admonished by subscribers and Western politicians for helping to spread Russian propaganda at a time when the country is being accused of war crimes.
Or maybe not. At the time of writing, Russia has not yet enforced the Vitrina TV law, and according to Netflix, it had already decided not to comply with it anyway. “Given the current situation, we have no plans to add these channels to our service,” the company said. “That’s exactly what I wished for when canceling,” says Tervonen. “Now they just have to keep their word.”
It remains to be seen how Roskomnadzor, the Russian regulator, will respond—but in theory, Netflix could face fines or have its license to operate in the country revoked. (Roskomnadzor did not respond to a request for comment.)
There’s political pressure, too. On March 1, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings had a call with Thierry Breton, the European Union’s commissioner for internal markets, who has been working closely with Ukraine’s first vice prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, to counter Russian propaganda. “Media regulators, telecoms operators, streaming services, online platforms—everyone needs to play its role in countering the Kremlin’s war propaganda,” Breton told reporters afterwards. “We can leave no stone unturned in the fight against Russian state-backed disinformation and belligerence.”
But that’s not quite what’s happening with Netflix. Although it’s not caving to Roskomnadzor’s demands, at the time of publication the service was still available in Russia—though some subscribers were reporting difficulties paying for Netflix as a result of Western sanctions on Russian banks.
As other companies weigh up their presence in Russia, Netflix is in an awkward position, because it has spent the past two years expanding its operations in the country. While it doesn’t have any staff there, it does have a Russian-language interface and also accepts payments in rubles. It’s also been ramping up its catalog of Russian-language original programming—projects like the sci-fi series Better Than Us and Chernobyl 1986, a dramatization of the nuclear disaster which was funded by Gazprom and criticized for playing down the role of Soviet government incompetence.
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In September 2020 Netflix also entered a partnership with National Media Group, a Russian broadcaster linked to billionaire Yury Kovalchuk, a close ally of president Vladimir Putin. NMG owns nearly 20 percent of Channel One, a pro-Putin broadcaster (and one of the 20 channels covered by the Vitrina TV law), and has provided funding to Netflix for projects like Anna K, a modern-day retelling of the novel Anna Karenina.
Like many Western technology and media companies, Netflix has had to balance its desire to grow into the sizable Russian market with a strict and sometimes unpalatable regulatory environment. In November 2021, for instance, Russia’s interior ministry said it was investigating Netflix for spreading “gay propaganda,” in violation of a 2013 law clamping down on LGBTQ+ content. But this isn’t a situation that’s unique to Russia. Netflix has always tailored its programming and its actions to suit local tastes and regulations.
In Saudi Arabia, it removed an episode of the comedy talk show The Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj that criticized the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in an apparent trade that allowed it to continue to broadcast sexually explicit content in the conservative country. In India, it’s signed up to a voluntary code and agreed to “self-censor” a range of content, including scenes that disrespect the national flag. In France, it agreed to invest 20 percent of its annual revenues in the country into producing French content, as part of regulations applied to all streaming platforms that want to operate there. “There is a transaction cost of moving into a market,” says Stuart Davis, an assistant professor of communication studies at Baruch College in New York. “It has to financially or programmatically bear the burden of being in that market.” There’s a cost-benefit analysis, in other words, behind Netflix’s continued presence in Russia.
But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed the equation. Other big tech companies have run the numbers and come up with their own answers—Apple has halted Russian sales of all its products and blocked access to its App Store; Facebook and Google have blocked a number of Russian media channels from monetization and removed them from its recommendations; TikTok and Twitter have complied with an EU requirement to block Russian state-owned accounts from its platforms. Although Netflix only has a few hundred thousand subscribers in Russia, Davis argues that in the current situation, where it’s already losing money and shedding millions of users to competitors like Disney+, every one of them counts.
As a result, some people think Netflix should pull out of Russia altogether. “It’s time for Netflix to abandon its business in Russia,” says Nora Bradshaw, head of growth for North America at Superunion, a global brand agency. “It would be a grave mistake for their brand—which is so intrinsically tied to giving a voice to diverse storytellers around the world—to be complicit in disseminating Russian propaganda in support of an unjust war.” It would, she says, be “even more damning” for Netflix to be seen as supporting the Kremlin for the sake of profits—that could be “fatal to their business as millions of subscribers around the world might cancel their subscriptions in protest.”
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As the war and the sanctions continue to bite, Netflix will likely face more pressure from Russian authorities, and from its subscribers in the West. There are legitimate questions over the merits and drawbacks of complete cultural isolation for ordinary Russians. But right now, Netflix still appears to be taking money from companies closely aligned to Putin to make programs that may be closely aligned to the goals of the Russian state. (WIRED understands that Netflix had two shows in production in Russia—one which is now paused, and another that is wrapping soon—and will not launch any new productions in the country, but the company would not confirm this.) “Netflix is nonpartisan,” a customer service representative for the company told one angry customer in response to a complaint before its decision to not comply with the Vitrina TV law was made public. “We feel it is important to foster a cultural conversation, rather than choose a side.”
But many other Western companies, from Apple to Warner Bros. to BP to General Motors, have decided that this isn’t about choosing sides.
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