Say something unsavoury about the Russian state online, and you could now be slapped with a hefty fine.

Russia's parliament has just approved bills which could see offenders cough up 100,000 roubles - that's about one and a half thousand dollars - for showing ''blatant disrepect'' for the state on the internet.

Individuals could be fined over three times more than that for circulating false information online.

The government says it was pushed to tackle the issue of fake news after recent incidents - such as a blogger broadcasting an inflated death toll of a fire at a Siberian mall last year.

But critics say the fines could open the way to direct state censorship of dissent.

Russia's human rights council and a group of over a hundred writers, poets, journalists and rights activists called on the upper house of parliament to reject the law.

(SOUNDBITE) (Russian) RUSSIAN PRESIDENTIAL COUNCIL FOR HUMAN RIGHTS MEMBER, EKATERINA SCHULMANN, SAYING: "The laws are so vague that they offer possibility for arbitrary application.

Their terminology is not juridical.

It is not clear how one can be proven to have deliberately distributed false information, how it can be proven in court that a person or a medium knew that the information they had distributed was false." The Kremlin denied the legislation amounts to censorship.

The bills will need President Vladimir Putin's signature before becoming law.