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YouTube has removed around 600 videos promoting Russia’s Alabuga college, which recruits workers for a sanctioned drone manufacturing facility, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said.
According to Sybiha, the video platform confirmed this week that it had taken down approximately 600 videos after a request from Ukraine. The videos, published across hundreds of channels with a combined audience of more than 500 million subscribers, were used to promote Alabuga and recruit personnel for the drone production facility.
“There is no place on global streaming platforms for Alabuga, a sanctioned Russian drone manufacturer,” Sybiha said, welcoming the decision and thanking Google for its cooperation.
The minister also expressed gratitude to content creator JesusAVGN (Oleksii Hubanov), journalist Michael Nacke, Nadya Tolokonnikova and her team — John Caldwell and Christian Carino — for helping expose the campaign. He also thanked the Cyber Department of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) for its work.
Sybiha said Ukraine’s next step will be to seek sanctions against individual bloggers who accepted payment to promote the sanctioned weapons manufacturer to millions of viewers.
“Knowingly promoting a factory that produces drones used to kill Ukrainians is not a content moderation issue. It carries consequences,” Sybiha said.
He also called on other major online platforms to take similar action, warning that recruitment campaigns linked to Alabuga remain active across multiple digital services. Ukraine, he added, is ready to cooperate with any platform willing to help stop the recruitment efforts.
