Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday blamed Alphabet's YouTube for slowing speeds on the video hosting platform in Russia and said Google must comply with Russian law if it wants to continue operating in Russia.

Critics believe YouTube is being deliberately disrupted by the authorities to prevent Russians from viewing content there that is critical of Putin and his government.

Russia denies that, saying the issues are caused by Google's failure to upgrade equipment - a charge disputed by the company and technology experts.

Russian internet monitoring services have reported mass outages of the online video hosting service in the last few months, but communications regulator Roskomnadzor denies blocking YouTube traffic.