Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at a meeting of the Federal Security Service Board on Feb. 24, 2021. (Photo: Xinhua)

The Kremlin said Tuesday it hopes Moscow will not be forced to block Western tech giants in the country but stressed that the companies had to abide by Russian law.

"No one wants a full ban and it would be silly to advocate for one," President Vladimir ­Putin's spokesperson ­Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with Russia's Argumenty i ­Fakty weekly. 

"But it's necessary to force the companies to follow our rules.

"We'd like to hope that it won't come to that and that ways to resolve the conflict will be found," he said in the interview published on Tuesday.

Russia's state communications watchdog earlier this month began disrupting Twitter services in Russia, saying the US platform failed to comply with its requests to delete content.

Authorities said the content was related to child pornography, drug use and calls for minors to commit suicide. 

Twitter has said it does not support "any unlawful behavior" and is "deeply concerned by increased attempts to block and throttle online public conversation."

Russia in 2019 passed a law on the development of "sovereign internet" aimed at isolating the country's internet from the worldwide web.

"If you don't want to accept our rules you cannot work here," Peskov told the weekly.

"Not a single self-respecting country will allow a company to impose its own terms. That's not possible."

The Kremlin spokesman also said that Putin had no media accounts and did not want to waste time keeping any.