Andrei Soldatov, a Russian journalist and author, used to consider his country the most connected in Europe. He can’t even recognize the Russian internet these days.
Since the invasion of Ukraine, websites with the.ru domain were only intermittently online. U.S. tech giants like Oracle and Microsoft have stopped selling software there. Many Russians are unable to pay for private networking apps that they use to bypass government censorship on sites like Facebook. This was after Visa and Mastercard stopped operations.
“Russia is so dependent upon online services. These things are now falling apart,” Soldatov, the author of “The Red Web,” a book about the Kremlin’s fights over online surveillance, said.
Three weeks in, Russia is facing a test unlike any other: After international sanctions have cut off many foreign services, a major economic and global power has been virtually isolated online. The Russian government also tightened its grip on online speech and access within its borders.
The future of the internet will depend on how it plays out. This is true for everyone Russians, but also for those who want to understand the global network that was meant to be one and not divided by the “digital iron curtain”.
Experts believe that Russia will turn to China for software and hardware products if the U.S. and European products are cut off too long. Russia may have to work hard to get enough connections to its internet traffic, if it is blocked by non-Russian countries or neighboring countries.
With a few exceptions to the rule, the fiber optic cables and mobile network that form the heart of the internet are generally apolitical. However, the largest land war in Europe for eight decades is challenging this idea.
Andrew Sullivan, CEO of the Internet Society (a non-profit organization founded in 1992 to support the internet based upon its original ideals of international cooperation and free information flow), stated that “we didn’t have all these layers of politics interfering” with the technical operation of these networks.
Sullivan stated that the Russian war in Ukraine is “obviously a strong reason” for some type of response. However, he expressed concern about the precedent.
He stated that “the more external concerns we import, the more likely it will be that the network is disrupted for political reasons.” There are many reasons why a network operator could disconnect once you have opened that door.
It’s a tension that has always existed in the internet. U.S. military researchers invented it, but it was California activists, including a former Grateful Dead lyricst, who created a mythology around the internet’s potential to be a globalizing, universal force for good.
Diplomatic maneuvers
As a way to press President Vladimir Putin to end his invasion, Ukraine has lobbyed for Russia’s online isolation. It asked ICANN (a non-profit organization that manages internet domains) to close down.ru. ICANN denied the request.
“ICANN was created to ensure the Internet works, and not to coordinate it,” CEO Goran Marty wrote in his response.
The situation suggests a future internet that is divided along national borders. Each country would have what amounts to a customs office for imports of internet content. Russia and China had been pushing a new top down internet protocol which would allow internet providers to block any app or website they want.
“They want to be able to move to not just one global network, but multiple networks where you can monitor your citizens more easily,” stated Karen Kornbluh (a former U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) and is a senior fellow at The German Marshall Fund, which supports stronger ties between America and Europe.
She said that Russia would like to be able “to cut off access to Signal” in the long-term, referring to a secure messaging app.
In a United Nations election campaign, one candidate is American while the other is Russian. 193 countries will elect the next chief of U.N.’s telecom arm the International Telecommunication Union. This is and it supports the proposed internet protocol.
The Biden administration has been a strong diplomatic force in the international fight against the internet. announced last year a new Bureau for Cyberspace and Digital Policy, to be led by an ambassador.
Concerns over the possible emergence of a “splinternet”, or a web balkanization, have gained momentum for various reasons in the last few years. In 2020, the Trump administration failed to ban two popular Chinese apps, TikTok, and WeChat.
Social media is a stronghold
The isolation of Russia has been astonishingly rapid. Yandex, Russia’s largest tech company and operator of the top Russian ride-hailing service and search engine, said that it is looking at moving 800 employees from Russia. The company has announced that two directors have resigned and warned it might not be able to pay its debts.
Soldatov stated that it was a sign of the state of things in Russia. He said Yandex was Russia’s pride and joy in the tech sector. “Now it is destroyed and nobody knows how to fix it.”
Soldatov stated that many Russian information technology professionals he knows are moving to other countries or sending their kids abroad in order to escape the growing repression of Putin. It is believed that the exodus of people totals in the thousands.
There are many examples of U.S.-based tech companies that have left Russia: Google stopped advertising sales, Netflix suspended services, Amazon cut off shipments and Apple pulled its products out of its Russian online storefront. Other companies made similar moves.
Social media apps like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook are the exception. They have not been blocked, but they are fighting to remain as uncensored information lifelines. YouTube, another platform for dissenting voices, is still unblocked. Experts wonder how long.
Soldatov stated that Russia should not be cut off from Facebook. Soldatov stated that Facebook is the only place where there’s an uncensored discussion and can discuss political news without fear. (Via virtual private networks or VPNs allow users to hide their location and often bypass government restrictions.
It helps to improve what has been a poor record for the relationship of social media with democracy. This is a responsibility that U.S. technology companies have accepted.
Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said to CNBC last week that social media was bad for dictators during a conference.
Access Now’s tech-legal counsel Natalia Krapiva stated that no matter what happens to Russia’s internet, Western countries should ensure that Russians have access to different viewpoints — not just via shortwave radio broadcasts.
Krapiva stated that it was not a good idea to isolate Russian citizens and give them state propaganda inciting them to hate Ukrainians.
She said, “At the very same time, we are hopeful that Russian civil society will be resilient.” “They have been living under repressions including digital repression for some time now, and it has increased over the last couple of years. People have found ways to adapt.”
Are you ready to go above the fray?
Russia is not the only country that has fought against government censorship. Geopolitics can affect internet traffic routing, but that’s what is different.
A country can connect to the internet through its local providers by purchasing bandwidth wholesale from a few large corporations and paying per unit. Rostelecom, the Russian internet service provider, purchases bandwidth from six companies according to Kentik. This company monitors internet traffic and, depending on how much slack there is, service might slow down to a crawl if any of them stop selling.
Cogent Communications, a wholesaler based in Washington D.C., said it would cease selling Russian service, while Lumen Technologies, based in Louisiana, said it plans to follow its lead .
“I have never seen it. Doug Madory (director of internet analysis at Kentik), said that he had never heard of it. “The internet has been able float above the fray. There have been wars and many people in the industry believe there is a reason to abandon the internet.
Madory stated that the difference this time is the unification of the U.S.-European response. This included other unusual actions such as a partial ban by SWIFT, the global network of banks.
He said, “This is broad and categorical — it takes a lot of economic warfare to get my point across, to do nothing short of shooting at a Russian soldier.”
Madory said, however, that his company had not seen any evidence of Cogent or Lumen cutting off Russian telecoms as of Monday. This raises the question of whether they will go to great lengths to cut ties with Russia.
Lumen’s global issues director Mark Molzen stated in an email that Lumen was not offering any services in Russia and that their physical network was offline. However, he said that Lumen was serving internet providers “outside Russia” who were routing traffic to the country.
Cogent stated in an email that it had ended Russian services to customers to prevent them from being “subverted and used for cyberattacks and other offensive activities.”
It’s not like Tonga
However, Russia still has connections to its east and south that could keep it connected, even though the service may be slow, according to Nicole Starosielski (an associate professor of media culture and communication at New York University).
She said that “it’s not going be Tonga” referring to South Pacific country in which an undersea volcano eruption cut off internet service completely in December. It took five weeks for workers from a special ship to fix the undersea cable that led to Tonga.
She said that many countries are dependent on international internet traffic and undersea cables to function. Russia is a much smaller example.
Putin has been contemplating disconnecting Russia internet from at least 2014. He has spent years trying to make Russia’s “sovereign Internet” more independent from other countries using homegrown software. Experts say Russia has its own suite of Microsoft-style software but the efforts have not met Putin’s goals.
Last week, a Russian official stated that did not intend to disconnect from the internet.
Russia faces other issues, including the need to find replacement routers, switches and other hardware. One bank started stockpiling equipment prior to the sanctions. Paul Barford, a professor of computer science at the University of Wisconsin, stated that such parts typically last two to three years.
He said, “In the medium-term, there could be an impact on their ability maintain standard levels of communications capability.”
Barford stated that Russia might be interested in buying Chinese replacements. However, for the moment, the U.S. has threatened Chinese producers with severe consequences if they do so. Taiwan is in compliance with international sanctions.
Experts said that while it may seem appealing for Russia to build internal internet controls similar to those in China in order monitor and censor traffic, this would require years of effort and vast resources and talent, which Russia does not have.
Barford stated that Russia could develop something similar if it had the will and ability to do so over time. “But this is very, very difficult, especially if people don’t align behind it — or if there are people subversive to it.”
