Facebook Inc. has seemingly complied with an order from the Russian government demanding that the social network block access to a page supporting one of President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critics.

The page in question calls for demonstrations to be held in support of Aleksei Navalny, a Russian lawyer and political activist who has been outspoken about the corruption of the Russian government and of President Putin in particular.

Navalny and his brother, Oleg, are currently on trial in Russia for allegedly stealing close to $500,000 from two companies, including French cosmetics company Yves Rocher. But according to some employees of Yves Rocher, no crime was committed.

After Russian prosecutors recommended that Navalny be given a 10 year sentence for the theft, Navalny’s supporters quickly formed a Facebook group calling for protests to be staged at the Kremlin, but now access to that page has been restricted by Facebook.

According to a Facebook spokesperson, the company is “looking into” the issue.

Legal censorship

While Facebook is not answerable to the Russian government, the company states that it complies with all local laws for the countries in which it operates. For example, Facebook regularly releases private information to government agencies for use in criminal trials when such requests are legally made.

“As we’ve said before, we scrutinize every government request we receive for legal sufficiency under our terms and the strict letter of the law, and push back hard when we find deficiencies or are served with overly broad requests,” a Facebook spokesperson said earlier this year.

Facebook attempts to remain transparent about government data requests, and it releases its Government Requests Report twice a year, showing the number of data requests made by each government, along with the percentage in which data was provided for those requests.

If Facebook did not comply with the requests made by the Russian government, it is possible that the social network could find itself in a similar situation to the one in which it finds itself in China.

After protesters coordinated demonstrations via the social network during anti-government rioting in 2009, the government of China banned Facebook from operating within the country.

Facebook has been trying to makes its way back into China since, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently gave a personal tour to China’s head internet regulator.