As the war in Ukraine rages, a long-standing battle between Russia and the United States over cyberspace is also heating up, with a top Russian diplomat warning of “catastrophic” consequences if the United States or its allies “provoke” Russia with a cyberattack.
The war in Ukraine has not only created untold suffering for multitudes and the greatest crises in international peace and security in decades. It also has potentially serious consequences for the future of the global internet as we know it, and a large international meeting set for 2025 might prove decisive.
A young girl singing “Let it Go” from Disney’s Frozen movie in a bomb shelter. A Ukrainian band in full combat gear offering to live-stream with pop star Ed Sheeran. And shots of civilians climbing on Russian tanks to brazenly wave the Ukrainian flag.
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.
As the conflict in Ukraine escalates, expert cyber-watchers have been speculating about the kind of cyber-attacks that Russia might conduct. Will the Kremlin turn off Ukraine’s power grid, dismantle Ukraine’s transport system, cut off the water supply or target the health system? Or would cybercriminals operating from Russia, who could act as proxies for the Russian regime, conduct these activities?
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.
Advocates of an open, globally connected Internet long have worried that a major country or region would break away from the Web amid geopolitical strife, dashing hopes of a seamless network capable of uniting a fractious world.
Russia’s Internet censorship agency announced on Friday that it plans to block access to Facebook throughout the country, joining a small handful of the world’s most repressive regimes in cutting off its citizens from the world’s largest social network. In an Orwellian twist, the agency, called Roskomnadzor, said it made the move to uphold the free flow of information, blaming Facebook for restrictions it has placed on Russian state media outlets in recent days.