On Friday, March 14, Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy blocked access to a blog written for its website by famous opposition activist Alexey Navalny on orders from Russian prosecutors. That decision was taken hours after the state telecom watchdog blacklisted the opposition figure’s LiveJournal blog.

      The Prosecutor General’s Office ordered Ekho Moskvy to restrict access to Navalny’s blog “in connection with identified signs of extremist activity,” the radio station’s chief editor Alexey Venediktov said in a statement. Prosecutors ordered the providers hosting Ekho Moskvy’s site to close down access to it within 24 hours if the radio station failed to comply, he said.

      Venediktov said Ekho Moskvy would ask officials to clarify which of Navalny’s statements were extremist “so that other materials not of an extremist nature may be available to users.”

      On Thursday, telecom watchdog Roscomnadzor blacklisted Navalny’s LiveJournal blog and several other independent websites, including Grani.ru, opposition site Kasparov.ru and online newspaper Yezhednevny Zhurnal, for “inciting users to engage in unlawful activities and take part in mass rallies that are in breach of the law.”

      The internet injunctions come on the heels of a series of other crackdowns on media freedom that critics have condemned as a harbinger of the death of long-suffering independent journalism in Russia.