(Adnkronos) – Discontent is growing increasingly vocal in Russia over the intermittent functioning of the Internet, imposed by security services in an escalating manner and peaking this month. This is seen as an unnecessary hindrance to the country’s development, compared, in an editorial by Nezavisimaya Gazeta, “to what happened in Stalin’s last years, with a cycle of bans on genetic research and robotics,” also motivated by security reasons (ideological, in that case). Muscovites have started buying maps and pagers. The cost for businesses, estimated by Kommersant, is 3-5 billion rubles (34.8-58 million dollars) for less than a week of Internet malfunction in Moscow.
“Internet restrictions are preventing Russia from joining the new technological order. The interests of security forces must not undermine the development of fundamental contemporary production factors,” it is emphasized. “Life in a contemporary city is unimaginable without a fast, high-quality mobile connection. It is the engine without which the economy slows down, businesses lose, and consequently the state suffers.”
“Today, we cannot allow security forces to hold the exclusive right to block work in technological sectors crucial for creating a future for Russia,” it concludes, after the disruptions, which in recent months affected regions bordering Ukraine, where in some areas the Internet has been blacked out since last summer, have also spread to large cities, to counter the increasingly sophisticated methods of attacks by Kyiv’s forces, where suddenly it is no longer possible to order a pizza or call a taxi.
While the reasons for this extension are unclear, whether it is an exercise to prevent mass unrest in reaction to a possible mobilization for Ukraine – as the Institute for the Study of War hypothesized in a recent analysis – or if it is a reflection of growing paranoia within the Kremlin.
Roskomnadzor has released a list of approved apps, starting with the messaging service, but also payments, Max created to replace Telegram, which has 90 million users in Russia. Perhaps precisely because of widespread discontent, and a request for clarification from State Duma deputies, the Federal Antimonopoly Service today announced a grace period until the end of the year for the ban on publishing advertisements on Telegram and YouTube, following the initiation, earlier this month, of legal proceedings against two bloggers who had done so. The FSB’s terrorism investigation against Pavel Durov, founder of the messaging platform, and rumors of a ban measure starting in April, remain.
