Tallinn, Estonia (AP) – Unloaded YouTube videos. Visits to popular independent media websites that create only blank pages. A mobile phone internet connection that has been down for hours or days.
Going online in Russia can be frustrating, complicated and even dangerous.
It’s not a network malfunction, but a intentional, multifaceted, long-term effort by the authorities to put the Internet under full control of the Kremlin. Authorities adopted the restriction law and banned websites and platforms that do not comply with it. The technology was completed to monitor and manipulate online traffic.
It is still possible to use virtual private network apps to bypass restrictions, but they are routinely blocked.
Authorities further restricted access to the internet this summer Shutting down your mobile phone’s internet connection They then adopt laws that punish users to search for content they deemed illegal.
They are also deploying a new “national” messenger that has threatened to pursue popular WhatsApp platforms, but is widely expected to be widely surveillance.
President Vladimir Putin has urged the government to “silence” foreign internet services and ordered officials to gather a list of platforms from “unfriendly” conditions that should be restricted.
Experts and rights advocates told The Associated Press the scale and effectiveness of the restrictions are surprising. Authorities now appear to be skilled at it, compared to the majority of previous efforts to limit online activities, approaching Russia’s internet quarantine.
Human Rights Watch researcher Anastasia Klupe describes Moscow’s approach to internet suppression as “death from a thousand cuts.”
“A little by little, you’re about to come to a place where everything is in control.”
Censorship after the protests in 2011-12
The Kremlin is making efforts to control online dates, what the Russians are doing, online dates, from 2011-12, when the internet was used to challenge authority. Independent media blossomed, and online coordinated anti-government demonstrations broke out after parliamentary elections and the decision to run again for Putin’s president.
Russia has begun adopting strict regulations on internet control. Some blocked websites. Others have requested that providers store call records and messages and share them with security services if necessary, and install equipment to allow authorities to control and block traffic.
Companies such as Google and Facebook have been pressured to store user data on Russian servers, and plans for the “sovereign Internet” have been announced, which could be useless and detached from the world.
The popular social media platform VK in Russia, like Facebook, was founded long before Pavel Durov launched Telegram Messenger and was under the control of a Kreegrlin-friendly company. Russia attempted to block telegrams between 2018-20 years, but failed.
Prosecutions for social media posts and comments have become common, indicating that authorities are closely watching online spaces.
Still, experts have dismissed the Kremlin’s efforts to curb the internet as useless, claiming that Russia is far from building something similar to China’s “great firewall” that Beijing uses to block foreign websites.
Ukrainian invasion causes repression
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, The government blocked major social media Like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Signal and a few other messaging apps. VPNs were also targeted, making it difficult to reach restricted websites.
YouTube access was confused last summer with what experts called an intentional throttle by authorities. The Kremlin has accused YouTube owner Google of not maintaining hardware in Russia. The platform was hugely popular in Russia, both in entertainment and with voices critical of the Kremlin, like the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Internet infrastructure provider CloudFlare said in June that websites using its services were being thrown in Russia. Independent news site Mediazona has also reported that several other popular Western hosting providers are being hampered.
Cyber lawyer Sarkis Darbinyan, founder of Russian internet freedom group Roskomsvoboda, said the authorities are asking them to move to Russian hosting providers that can control businesses.
He estimates that about half of all Russian websites are equipped with foreign hosting and infrastructure providers, many offering better quality and prices than their domestic equivalents. The “huge number” of global websites and platforms use these providers, which means that they are “not automatically accessible” in Russia.
Another trend is the integration of Russian internet providers and companies that manage IP addresses, according to the Human Rights Watch report on July 30th.
Last year, authorities increased the cost of obtaining internet provider licenses from 7,500 rubles (about $90) to 1 million rubles (over $12,300). State data shows that over half of all Russian IP addresses are managed by seven large companies, with Rostercom, the Russian state telephone and internet giants accounting for 25%.
The Kremlin is striving to “control the internet space in Russia, censor things and manipulate traffic.”
Criminalize searches for “extremists”
New Russian laws criminalized online searches for widely defined “extremist” material. This includes LGBTQ+ content, opposition groups, several songs by performers critical of the Kremlin, and Navalny’s Memoir, who was designated as extremists last week.
Right supporters say it is a step towards punishing not only providers but consumers who are regularly fined or imprisoned for reading and chasing certain independent media.
Stanislav Seleznev, cybersecurity expert and lawyer for Net Freedom Rights Group, does not expect ubiquitous prosecution as he tracks individual online searches in 146 million countries. But even a limited number of cases can scare many people from limited content, he said.
Another big step is blocking WhatsApp. MediaScope monitoring said it had more than 97 million users per month in April.
“We should prepare to leave the Russian market,” said MP Anton Gorrelkin instead, WhatsApp “should prepare to leave the Russian market,” Max, a new “national” messenger developed by social media company VK. Another popular messenger, Telegram, is probably not restricted, he said.
Touted as a one-stop shop for messaging, online government services, payments and more, Max has been rolled out for beta testing but has not yet gained widespread support. More than 2 million people had been registered by July, TASS News Agency reported.
The terms and conditions state that user data will be shared with authorities upon request, and the new law provides for pre-installation on all smartphones sold in Russia. State agencies, officials and businesses are actively encouraged to move communications and blogs to Max.
The Anastasia Zhyrmont of the Access Now Internet Freedom Group said in July that it could test how both Telegram and WhatsApp affect internet infrastructure in Russia.
It’s not uncommon. In recent years, authorities have regularly tested blocking the internet from other parts of the world, and have sometimes stopped in some areas.
Darbinyan believes that the only way to get people to use Max is to “shut down and hold back” all western alternatives. “But again, habits… don’t change in a year or two. And these habits have been acquired over decades when the internet was fast and free,” he said.
Government media and internet regulator Roskomnadzor uses more sophisticated methods to analyze all web traffic and identify what could be blocked or choked, Darbinyan said.
Since 2022, it has been aided by Western sanctions and businesses as “a year of perfecting the technology, taking over and understanding the internet and player architecture.”
Russia is “not yet there” to isolate the internet from other parts of the world, Darbinyan said, but the Kremlin efforts “have brought it closer.”
