Ukrainian President urges Mark Zuckerberg for a Facebook office separate from Russia

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has urged Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to create an office for the social network in Ukraine, after Zuckerberg invited Facebook users to send him questions to be answered in a Q&A this week. The move comes after Facebook, which is currently administered regionally from Russia, had suspended the accounts of a number of prominant users, including Ukranian poet Andriy Bondar and Russian journalist Sergey Parkhomenko, for posts deemed critical of the Russian government.

“Dear Mark Zuckerberg, we have to use all available channels to get reaction from global companies,” wrote Poroshenko to Zuckerberg on Facebook. Poroshenko’s post triggered thousands of other users to request a separate office in Ukraine, as well as a more efficient way to block abuse reports from Russian accounts.

Facebook, as well as Twitter and Google, has been subject to scrutiny in the last year in Russia and Ukraine amid mounting tensions between both countries. In December last year, Facebook and Twitter said they were ready for a complete block after both sites refused to comply with further demands from Russia’s federal media watchdog Roskomnadzor to block pages of supporters of opposition figure Alexei Navalny.