
Several weeks after taking over Ukraine’s southern port city of Kherson, Russian soldiers arrived at the offices of local internet service providers and ordered them to give up control of their networks.
Global Domain Name and Internet Policy News
Several weeks after taking over Ukraine’s southern port city of Kherson, Russian soldiers arrived at the offices of local internet service providers and ordered them to give up control of their networks.
I want us to consider the implications of this new reality: In three of the four most populous countries in the world, governments have now given themselves the power to order that the internet be wiped of citizens’ posts that the authorities don’t like.
As bullets and bombs fall in Ukraine, Russia is waging an expanding information war throughout Eastern Europe, using fake accounts and propaganda to spread fears about refugees and rising fuel prices while calling the West an untrustworthy ally.
Since the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine in late February 2022, Russian internet users have experienced what has been dubbed the descent of a “digital iron curtain.”
For years China’s censors have relied on a trusted tool kit to control the country’s internet. They have deleted posts, suspended accounts, blocked keywords, and arrested the most outspoken.
Now they are trying a new trick: displaying social media users’ locations beneath posts.
A Russian court has banned Facebook and Instagram in the country, labelling its parent company Meta as “extremist” amid the Kremlin’s sweeping crackdown on western social media giants.
Long before waging war on Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin was working to make Russia’s internet a powerful tool of surveillance and social control akin to China’s so-called Great Firewall.
A digital Iron Curtain may be descending on Russia, as President Vladimir Putin struggles to control the narrative about his war in Ukraine. The Kremlin has already moved to block Facebook and Twitter, and its latest step in that direction came Friday as the government announced plans to block Instagram in the country, as well.
Like much else about the country, Russia’s internet has long straddled East and West.
Even as President Vladimir V. Putin tightened his grip on Russian society over the past 22 years, small pockets of independent information and political expression remained online.