Pedestrians pass by a giant logo of Twitter hanging on the front gate of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, U.S., Nov. 7, 2013. (Photo: Xinhua)

 
Russia's telecom watchdog Roskomnadzor has limited Twitter's traffic starting Wednesday due to its failure to remove content banned in the country such as calls for minor suicides, child pornography, use of drugs, among others.

"Starting today, Roskomnadzor has taken centralized response measures aimed at slowing down the speed of the service," said Vadim Subbotin, deputy head of Roskomnadzor.

Subbotin said the limitation will affect all mobile devices and half of non-mobile devices, primarily influencing the posting of photos and videos.

The measures will stay in place until Twitter completely removes the banned content, he said.

Russia "has every reason to block Twitter completely" since it has ignored repeated warnings on the need to abide by the country's legislation, Subbotin added.

"We have no intention of blocking anything, but taking measures to force these companies to comply with our laws, of course, is entirely justified," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, also on Wednesday.

Internet users in Russia reported a network outage earlier in the day. It remains unclear if the disruption was a side effect of the crackdown on the banned Twitter content.