The Kremlin has been throttling the internet and blaming security threats. Many Russians aren’t buying it

When residents in central Moscow tried to use their phones on Tuesday morning to log onto social media, do their banking or order a taxi, they were blocked from accessing the internet.

It was just the latest mobile outage to hit the capital.

Videos emerged online of people camped out in fast food chain restaurant Vkusno i tochka and cafes to use the Wi-Fi, which was still working.

When mobile internet service returned by mid-afternoon, the government used a familiar refrain to justify the temporary blocking: it was necessary for security reasons. 

Telecom providers and Russian banks have warned people that they should be prepared for outages in the run-up to the annual May 9th Victory Day Parade, which will be drastically scaled back this year. But the outages appear to be part of Moscow’s strategy to choke off access to the internet and replace it with Kremlin-approved sites and platforms. 

“Officials say that it’s for our security … but most of the people around me don’t trust [that],” said Artem, a 37-year-old teacher living in the Moscow area, who only wanted to be identified by his first name because of how dissenting voices are treated in Russia.

“People get worried and stressed because … we don’t find the explanation reasonable,” he told CBC News via Zoom.

Internet restrictions have increased throughout Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which is now into its fifth year. As the Kremlin tries to keep up its narrative that the war was just and that Russia will prevail, it has tried to limit any online information contradicting that.

As Ukraine now uses longer-range drones to hit further and more frequently in Russia, and amid reports that security has been tightened around President Vladimir Putin, the government is saying mobile internet restrictions are necessary to prevent “terrorist attacks.”

The so-called whitelist 

Officials have argued that mobile networks can aid drones in homing in on their targets. But the mobile internet outages have also coincided with a new government campaign to target virtual private networks (VPNs), which allow a user to mask their IP address and are widely used by Russians to circumvent government restrictions in the country’s digital space.

Without the use of a VPN, many foreign platforms, such as YouTube, Instagram and the popular messaging app Telegram, are largely inaccessible. With thousands of VPN services still available in Russia, the state has increasingly targeted the technology and now requires internet providers to identify users logging on through a VPN and to restrict their access.

It’s the latest effort to create what Russian lawmakers envision as a sovereign internet that features Russian-made platforms, shaped by Russian laws. 

The authorities have curated a so-called whitelist, which is an approved set of websites and platforms that are supposed to remain accessible even when other internet traffic is blocked. 

The recent outages and the increasing government control over the country’s digital space has led to growing public discontent, including from the country’s state-aligned software industry.  

Accusations of breaking the internet

Natalya Kaspersky, an influential tech manager who sits on a number of Kremlin advisory boards, has said the government’s restrictions are leading to a breakdown of the internet and “causing massive public dissatisfaction with the authorities.” 

Kaspersky, who runs cybersecurity company Kaspersky Labs and chairs the board of the Association of Russian Software Developers, sent a letter to Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin on April 22, and followed up with a post on social media calling out the government’s actions. 

She made the post on Telegram, which is widely used by Russian citizens and government agencies, but now can only be reliably accessed with the use of a VPN.

She said that there have been outages “practically every day” and doubted that all of the disruptions could be “explained by the fight against enemy drones.”

In her letter, she pointed out that the more that regulators try to target VPN traffic, the more legitimate traffic, like banking sites, get caught up and blocked. 

“People have had platforms blocked, they find ways to circumvent this. They are blocked from circumventing these blocks and they find new ways,” she wrote.

Widespread VPN usage

Artem, who works with students, said many of them are already avid users of VPNs.

“When they start using smartphones from the age of eight … some of them can use VPNs already,” he said. 

Artem said VPNs are readily available and relatively cheap, which is why he has subscriptions to a few different services, so that when one lags or is blocked, he can switch to another. 

Using a VPN isn’t illegal in Russia, but the government is looking at additional ways to curtail its use.

Russia’s Digital Development Ministry is working on a plan to levy fees on those who use more than 15 gigabytes of international data per month on mobile networks, and at the end of March, Minister of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev would not rule out introducing administrative penalties for VPN use.

Last week, Valery Fadeev, the head of the country’s Presidential Human Rights Council, called the use of VPNs unnatural, saying that Russians who are using them are not looking for “an alternative point of view” but for “what the enemy is saying.”

Mikhail Klimarev, the executive director of the Internet Protection Society, which advocates for a free internet and helps users learn how to bypass restrictions, described Russia’s digital censorship as “very bad” and believes it is even worse than what’s happening in China, because of the number of sites being blocked.

Beijing’s system of digital censorship is often referred to as the Great Firewall, while some outside of Russia have labelled the Kremlin’s system a “digital Iron Curtain.”

The authorities “would like an information autocracy, to stop citizens’ access to free information,” said Klimarev, who is now based in Germany and spoke to CBC News by Zoom. 

He says those who don’t have the technical know-how to navigate Russia’s restrictions will stay awash in the Russian narrative and “the propaganda,” while others will ultimately find new ways to bypass the evolving censorship.