Vladimir Putin is investigating slow speeds and outages on YouTube in Russia after the country’s top film official raised the issue with him, the Kremlin said today.

Critics say YouTube has been deliberately disrupted by authorities to prevent Russians from watching much content critical of Putin and his government.

Russia denies these claims and insists the problems were caused by Google’s failure to upgrade its equipment; company and technology experts dispute this accusation.

Russian internet monitoring services have reported mass outages of the online video hosting service owned by Alphabet’s Google over the past few months.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the speed issue was due to Google’s failure to comply with Russian laws and that technical questions should be referred to communications regulator Roskomnadzor.

Roskomnadzor and Google did not respond to requests for comment at the time of this writing.

According to research company Mediascope, YouTube is used by more than 50 million Russians every day. It provides an important platform for the Russian opposition in exile and independent news sources.

Peskov claimed that YouTube speeds are not high on people’s agendas in Russia. However, Karen Shakhnazarov, who has managed Mosfilm, the state-owned giant of Soviet and Russian cinema, for more than 25 years, said that he met with Putin yesterday and discussed the issue.

“In my opinion, slowing down YouTube is not advisable today,” Shakhnazarov said on state television.

“The president said there was all kinds of filth there.”

Google, along with other foreign tech firms and social media platforms, has been under pressure in Russia for several years over its failure to remove what it considers illegal content, particularly what Moscow calls “fake” content about the war in Ukraine.

Russia also strongly opposes Google’s blocking of YouTube channels and videos on state-sponsored media.

Shakhnazarov said that he acknowledged that there were some bad things on YouTube, but that those who wanted to access them were able to bypass the restrictions, and that many others simply used the platform to watch movies and other content.

“He listened and said, ‘I’ll investigate,'” Shakhnazarov said. he said.