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The series premiered on November 14, 2019 on the Premier online platform owned by Gazprom Media. New episodes were released weekly on Thursdays. However, the fifth episode of the television series, released on December 12, was removed from the platform on the night of December 14, and it was planned to postpone the remaining second half of the Epidemic to February 2020 [3]. Director Pavel Kostomarov said that for him the transfer of the second part of the series to next year was a surprise. Meanwhile, this is the second series in one week, removed from the show of "Gazprom Media". The media reported that a possible reason for removing the “Epidemics” from the air might be riots and execution by riot police units of civilians, shown in the fifth series.
On December 16, TNT's promotional producer Christina Snickers, after removing the fifth episode of the series, criticized censorship on Russian television .Already on December 18, 2019, the director of TV-3 and the series producer Valery Fedorovich officially announced on his Facebook page that on December 19, 2019 they plan to resume showing on the Premier online platform by posting the 5th and 6th series [11], but at the end of the day officially announced the postponement of placement of series for 1 day. The 5th and 6th series were posted on December 20, 2019 According to the Meduza publication, the Minister of Culture of Russia Vladimir Medinsky helped resume the show. According to two sources of the publication close to the ministry and three interlocutors close to TNT, Medinsky contacted the head of Gazprom Media Dmitry Chernyshenko and specified what happened to the series. According to sources, Medinsky had “serious meetings” with Chernyshenko. After the resumption of the show in the sixth episode, a commentary appeared on the announcer, which clarifies that the shooting of civilians is not done by security forces and the military, but by "representatives of illegal armed groups."
