President Vladimir Putin was attempting to make Russia’s internet a strong tool of surveillance and social control, similar to China’s so-called Great Firewall, long before waging war on Ukraine.
As a result, Russian investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov was frightened when Western tech corporations began breaking relations with Russia following its invasion. He’d spent years exposing Russian censorship and concerned that well-intentioned measures to aid Ukraine might instead boost Putin’s propaganda war by isolating Russians from the free flow of information. The Kremlin quickly took up the baton, limiting both Facebook and Twitter to the point where they are essentially unavailable on the Russian internet. Putin has also restricted access to both Western and independent news outlets in the country, and a new law makes it illegal to transmit material that opposes the government’s position. The Kremlin also stated that access to Instagram would be restricted. The network monitor NetBlocks discovered network data revealing the social network was banned in Russia across numerous users by early Monday.
The government has had minimal success in preventing the use of software known as virtual private networks, or VPNs, which allows users to circumvent content restrictions. Putin’s attempts to limit the use of other censorship-eluding software are similarly misguided. This puts internet bandwidth and related firms that are sympathetic to Ukraine’s predicament in a difficult position. On one, they are under public pressure to punish the Russian government, and on the other, they are under economic pressure to curtail services at a time when bills are likely to go unpaid.
Microsoft, on the other hand, hasn’t announced if it will stop offering cloud services in the nation, while suspending all new product and service sales. Cogent, a major “backbone” provider for internet traffic located in the United States, has severed direct connections within Russia but maintained open pipes via subsidiaries of Russian network providers at exchanges physically outside the country. There has been no discernible decrease in connection from outside providers. All internet providers in Russia are required by law to install hundreds of so-called middleboxes, which are router-like devices managed and remotely controlled by officials that may ban particular websites and services. In any case, the framework, which additionally lets the FSB security administration spy on Russian residents, is a general strainer contrasted with China’s Great Firewall. Andrew Sullivan, leader of the charitable Internet Society, said there’s no proof it can effectively disengage Russia from the more extensive web.
ProtonVPN, which Droz says has been creative in tracking down ways of avoiding Russian impeding, reports timing tenfold the number of day-to-day information exchanges than before the conflict. VPN administrations followed by analysts at Top10VPN.com observed Facebook and Twitter downloads flooding multiple times higher than normal.
Russia’s elites are believed to be big VPN users. No one expects them to disconnect.
Sources:
https://www.g2.com/articles/internet-censorship
https://exit.al/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/12/skype_censorship.jpg
After Russia caused a fire in one of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, Russia tried to deny its involvement. I heard that Russia was calling reports of the fire “fake news”, and that they would be punishing news outlets that reported the “fake news”. I think this is extremely dangerous for Russian citizens! We really can’t know what Russian citizens are being made to believe about the conflict with Ukraine.
This is why free press is so important. When the government is able to censor the information that its citizens have access to, it gives the government an enormous amount of power. The Russian government gets to choose what its citizens believe! The citizens have a right to know the truth about their government.
After this, As part of President Vladimir Putin’s onslaught on social media and news agencies like the BBC, Russia has already restricted access to Facebook, limited access to Twitter, and criminalized the purposeful distribution of what Moscow considers to be “false” information.
Information and information control has always been a crucial tool of war, and I guess things like this and China’s Great Firewall are the next stepping stones of that into the digital age. It’s good to see that there are ways to easily circumvent this, at least in the poorly set up systems, via things like VPNs, as that allows news to propagate despite being restricted by the government for jeopardizing their plans. Hopefully this attitude towards censorship continues throughout the future, as I strongly believe that when a government starts trying that hard to block information from their citizens, there’s a distinct reason that it probably shouldn’t be censored from them.
Great article! Seeing the kremlin struggle to control information with an increase on censorship/media control is something that is terrifying to think about. Being a citizen there and being unable to know whether or not one is receiving the truth at a government level is difficult to manage. Especially over something as serious as war. Never thought I’d see the day where VPN’s would a necessity for news.
Seeing how quickly the Russian government took control of the internet is slightly alarming to think about but it is good to see that Russian citizens are still looking for access to information. The idea of needing a VPN for something as simple as opening up instagram is strange as I would never think that my access to the app would ever be limited. Although Russia has always been somewhat of a dictatorship it seems that Putin is taking it to the next level with the attack on Ukraine and the increase in censorship. I’ve seen in the news that they have started arresting anyone that shows up to anti-war protests regardless of age, and even if they are on their side. I think that Russia is trying to limit any unsanctioned information and interviews about the invasion whether it be in support of them or not.
Since Putin wanted to revive the USSR, I would say he has made great progress in forming the domestic policy under Stalin. Curtailing the freedom of the press will severely limit the Russian citizen’s ability to fight against absolutism and give greater control to the government in suppressing any form of dissent or backlash from the people. This post clearly indicates the important need for a VPN to protect oneself online and to avoid being identified by people who do not wish you good. I think this was a great post. Good Job!
It seems like governments can not really get around VPNs, because when Nigeria also banned twitter almost everyone downloaded a VPN and it was like the platform was not banned in the country in the first place. This was a great post!
The real losers of the current war are not just the Ukrainians, like you’ve pointed out, another set of people who suffer from the invasion are the average Russian citizens. The sanctions and cyber-measures taken against Russia will further impoverish and isolate the average Russian, and the gain from a successful invasion will be less than negligible, especially to the Russian middle class. It saddens me to see the internet, which was supposed to provide access to a fountain of information to all in its modern form, be reduced to something that does the opposite of enlighten. Like the Great Firewall, the average Russian will probably be put further into the dark. Hopefully Russian citizens have gotten ahold of VPNs or encryption tools to keep them as free from surveillance as possible. Thank you for the post.
Great article, I agree with the concerns of Soldatov in that by isolating Russia it could make it even easier for Russian censorship and propaganda to occur which could lead to harmful effects. Its nice to see however that they are struggling to stop the use of VPNS, which also shows just how important they are
I am so glad that VPN’s are still a viable tool for the average Russian citizen that has just been in the cross fire from their government. I knew many companies were withdrawing their services from Russia as a means of some kind of punishment but I never considered how it may lead to propaganda becoming more effective when the sources for news become limited. It is honestly a scary thing to have to go behind your government just to get some sense of the truth of what is going on around you.
Countries like North Korea, China and now Russia love to depend on the power of propaganda so that they can put pressure on their civilians into conforming with their ill intentions when it comes to their aggressive stances. I remember when I went to China, I could not access any of the regular social media apps and I felt surprised by how much information is being hidden from the people of China. I am strongly against governments controlling what people can see and know. Freedom of thought and the right to seek knowledge are basic human rights that should not be tampered with.
It is true that people can use VPNs to access certain websites when they are blocked but not everyone is aware of these methods, especially the older generation. This is probably why the propaganda works better on people who are not so good with technology. Also, the fact that western social media and tech companies are voluntarily walking out is also doing harm as this will only be aiding Putin in his attempt to isolate the Russian people from the rest of the world. I hope and pray that the people of Russia can fight back against this suppression of information and make it through these tumultuous times. Thanks for shedding light on this topic Balsher.
Great Information! It is a global crisis that we are getting to read news like Russia’s cyber attacks, spying, etc. everyday. The use of VPNs lately has surely made it slightly more accessible for people to access certain websites when blocked. However, the whole topic is very concerning.
With Russia joining China in severely censoring the information the enters the country via the internet, serious questions are raised about the direction of our global society in the age of information. As heavy internet users, we tend to assume that everyone everywhere has access to all the information they could want, like we do. This privilege shapes our worldview greatly. Could government censorship be the beginning of the end of the age of information?
This is a very interesting blog post. I think the whole situation kind of highlights the beauty of the internet; it’s “free territory” (for lack of a better term). No matter how hard governments try to censor certain websites, they simply won’t be able to; the average citizen can access a VPN at virtually no cost, and bypass any restrictions immediately while being undetected. The only way to restrict access to certain resources on the internet would be to essentially block access to the internet as a whole. While certain governments have done this before, I doubt the Russian government would be willing to go that far as it’d likely cause even more of their citizens to revolt against them.
Good Post! Something that is rather interesting to me is the new Russian law
that makes it illegal to transmit material that opposes the government’s position. It is common knowledge by now that the Russian government has a tight grip on what the Russian people can and cannot see, just look at some of the recent Russian support for the war, surely there is some misinformation being spread. But with the advent of the war in Ukraine, and the passing of this law, it seems like the Russian government is becoming more explicit and determined in its efforts to control the flow of information to the Russian people. No doubt this issue will become even worse with western media companies pulling out of the country.
Great post! In your opinion, were the motions made by Microsoft and other big tech firms essentially just lip service while they quietly held these backdoors open? Particularly since there has been no discernible decrease in traffic. Furthermore, it seem almost comical that the elites of Russia are still using VPNs and are not expected to disconnect any time soon while the government is banning them for everyone else.
This seems very similar to what happened in Iran in 2019 where they shut down effectively the internet to remove dissent and protest and only allow users to browse ‘approved’ sites. I see how you mentioned that the government can’t really stop users from using VPNs to counter these controls and I wonder how less effective these controls would be on TOR as it is an alternative to VPNs. I wonder how the disconnect of cloud services will affect Russian business as cloud services are frequently used by corporations. Also, I wonder if the Russian government is ill equip to deal with cyber security threats since in addition to not be so successful in controlling the internet, anonymous is hacking into and leaking a lot of sensitive data from Russian government sites. I think your article is important as it sheds some light on government control in the cyber space.