As Putin's invasion of Ukraine continues to expand, so too does his censorship of social media.

As the invasion of Ukraine enters its third day, Russia has blocked access to Twitter in an apparent effort to stifle the flow of information, according to a report from the internet monitoring group NetBlocks. Beginning Saturday morning, NetBlocks saw failed or heavily throttled connections across every major Russian telecom provider, including Rostelecom, MTS, Beeline, and MegaFon. Russians are still able to access Twitter through VPN services, but direct connections are restricted.

This is hardly a surprising development, but it does beg a question: Is Putin trying to hide his troops’ setbacks or their excesses?

Censorship by its nature implies Putin is hiding something.