This happened last week, but I just learned about it today. Here's what appears to be the EU order, from a takedown request archived in the Lumen Database; I used a VPN to do searches from Belgium and France, and indeed saw that no search results from those sites come up, and Google gives the takedown request as a justification.
I'm appalled by Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and I appreciate that the information war is a big part of the war (though a war in which, officially, the EU is not a combatant). But restrictions on the availability of one side's views also obviously limit the European public's ability to get a full picture of the war, for instance in deciding what to think and do about the European reaction to the invasion. (Even the Kremlin's lies say something important about the Kremlin's perspectives and attitudes; plus the sites are blocked in their entirety, including their long-ago archives and other materials that aren't part of at least this information war.) And of course it might be worth trying to game out whether this is likely to lead to pressure to similarly vanish content from other countries that are accused of misconduct (whether justifiably or not), such as China, Israel, etc.
In any event, I'd love to hear people's views on the subject; I include at the end of this post one reaction from a colleague, sent when I posted a query to a law professor discussion list.
