On 1 October 2026, Russian Government Resolution No. 514 of 6 May 2026 took effect alongside the platform-economy law it implements. It sets the procedure by which the communications regulator Roskomnadzor decides whether to apply enforcement measures against foreign operators of intermediary digital platforms. Caveat on sourcing: we confirmed the resolution's title and adopter on the Pharmvestnik legal database, but the full PDF text was not accessible to us. The procedural details below come from a ppt.ru legal summary and should be read with that limit in mind.
What the resolution does
The resolution's formal title is the rules for Roskomnadzor's decision on applying measures under Part 1 of Article 22 of the law "On Certain Issues of Regulating the Platform Economy in the Russian Federation", Federal Law No. 289-FZ of 31 July 2025. According to the ppt.ru summary, the mechanism has two steps:
- Supervisory bodies must send Roskomnadzor information about a violation within five working days of documenting it, with a recommended enforcement measure and supporting materials.
- Roskomnadzor then decides whether to apply a measure within five working days of receiving that report.
The procedure applies only to foreign operators already entered in the official registry of intermediary digital platforms. The law itself, per a ppt.ru summary, creates that registry and imposes marketplace duties: disclosing when the platform is not the direct seller, product-card and logistics standards, and bans on listing goods that are prohibited or lack mandatory registration.
The strongest case for the rule
The case for a fast procedure is not frivolous. A marketplace that lists unregistered medicines or supplements, or that deceives buyers about who the seller is, harms consumers in real time. A foreign operator with no local presence can be hard to reach through ordinary courts, and a regulator that takes months to respond may be ignored. Writing the steps down in a government resolution is also arguably better than ad hoc action: it at least names the stages and the deadlines. Consumer-protection enforcement against opaque platforms is a legitimate goal, and our own position favours proportionate rules for large intermediaries.
Where the design is weak
The difficulty is what the procedure, as summarised, does not appear to contain. We could not confirm from the sources available any step for notifying the operator, any right to respond before a decision, or any independent review inside the ten-working-day window. The deadlines run between state bodies. The platform is not mentioned as a party to them. That may be an artefact of a short summary, and the full text could say otherwise. But the structure is clear enough to raise the question: a decision made within roughly two weeks of documentation, on the recommendation of the body that found the violation, is an enforcement pipeline rather than an adjudication.
Proportionality depends on the menu of measures. The summary does not list them, and we have not verified which measures Article 22 contemplates. That matters. If the measures are limited to warnings and fines, a fast clock is a modest efficiency. If they extend to throttling or blocking, the same clock becomes a tool for removing a service from the Russian market before anyone has tested the evidence. Readers should treat that as an open question to be resolved by the official text, not as a finding.
The distinction matters because of the regulator that holds the pen. Roskomnadzor has a documented record of using its technical powers against foreign services. Meduza reported that on 10 February 2026 the agency confirmed it was "partially restricting" Telegram, saying the service did too little against fraud and did not comply with Russian law, while declining to specify which restrictions applied. That episode involved a messenger rather than a marketplace, and it predates Resolution 514, so it is not evidence of how this procedure will be used. It does show why a faster, more formal route to coercion deserves scrutiny: the agency has not historically been shy about acting on foreign platforms, and a rule that shortens its decision time lowers the cost of doing so further.
What the law covers in practice
It would be wrong to read Resolution 514 as a measure aimed mainly at social media. Interfax reported that the law's entry into force covers marketplace-style operators, with examples such as Wildberries, Ozon, Avito and Joom, and that administrative fines reach up to 500,000 rubles for legal entities. Interfax did not mention Roskomnadzor's role. The registry-only limit is therefore a real constraint: a foreign platform that is not on the registry is outside this specific procedure, though it may be exposed to other powers. For operators such as Joom that are in the registry, the practical issue is compliance planning. They should assume that a documented violation can reach a decision in about ten working days.
What would make it proportionate
Three changes would address the concerns without weakening consumer protection. First, publish the full list of measures available under Article 22 and tie the most severe ones to repeated or serious violations. Second, give the operator written notice and a short window to cure or respond. Third, require reasoned, published decisions so courts and the public can see how the power is used. Speed and due process are not opposites; a five-day response period for the operator would still fit within a quick timeline.
Whether Resolution 514 becomes a consumer-protection tool or another lever of control will depend on the unpublished detail and on how Roskomnadzor uses it. Our assessment, limited by the sources we could open, is that the procedure is well suited to speed and poorly specified on safeguards. Observers should watch the first enforcement decisions for which measures are chosen and whether any platform gets to be heard first.