'Great crackdown': Russia tightens the screws on the internet

Highlights:
Moscow jams mobile internet in parts of Russia
Government blocks WhatsApp, restricts Telegram
New laws bolster powers of FSB security agency

Office workers toiling with blocked internet. Teenagers continually forced to switch VPNs. Taxi drivers struggling to find their way around Moscow without online navigation.

The Kremlin is flexing its muscles over the internet.

The government is periodically jamming the web in regions across Russia, while restricting messaging services Telegram and WhatsApp and taking down dozens of virtual private networks that can be used to swerve bans on sites and apps.

Over the past week, mobile internet has been completely down every day in parts of central Moscow, St Petersburg and other major cities, according to Reuters reporters in those areas and eight senior foreign diplomats in Russia.

"These measures are taking place," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters when asked about restrictions to messaging apps and internet service.

"They are partly related to the fact that a number of foreign companies refuse to comply with the norms of Russian legislation, and partly due to security measures against the threat of Ukrainian drones."

Attack drones can use cellular networks to aid navigation.

Russia's online clampdown this year has been accompanied by the introduction of new laws which oblige mobile operators to cut off any client at the demand of the Federal Security Service and give the agency powers to create a network of pre-trial detention centres under its own jurisdiction.

The broader aim of the bolstering of online powers is to help the Kremlin shore up domestic control in the context of the war against Ukraine, according to the diplomats who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Should the conflict drag on, it could increasingly strain popular support, the envoys said. Should the war end, Russian officials are likely keen to prepare for any dissent that may ensue, they added. One said Moscow had assembled powers that gave it the option to enact a "great crackdown" online.

The end of Moscow's war in Afghanistan in 1989 caused major social ructions in Russia with returning veterans fuelling a wave of lawlessness that blighted the 1990s. The chaos was compounded by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

"Russia's leaders and security services remember 1991 and they remember what happened to Russia and what happened to them when Moscow stopped a big war in Afghanistan: the country collapsed, the security services were split apart - it was a disaster," said Andrei Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist who is an expert on the security services.

"What is happening now is that the security services are trying to create a situation in which - if Putin signs a peace deal or if Putin goes for a protracted war - it would not destroy the whole thing."

Two Russian sources with knowledge of the online clampdown said Moscow had studied the experience of other countries, particularly China and Iran, and had tasked authorities with developing a way to block swathes of the internet, both mobile and fixed, while controlling online communications.

Kremlin targets messaging apps

After the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia imposed the most repressive laws seen since Soviet times, bolstering censorship powers and the influence of the FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB.

This year, Moscow has further ratcheted up security. President Vladimir Putin, who served as a KGB officer from 1985-1990, marked the fourth anniversary of the Ukraine war on February 24 by attending the FSB's annual meeting in Moscow.

He told the agency to step up the fight against terrorism - in which he included attacks from Ukraine - while strengthening the "information and digital space".

Kremlin spokesman Peskov said that all measures were lawfully taken to ensure security amid the Ukraine conflict, which Putin casts as a confrontation with the West.

Two Russian officials close to the Kremlin disputed that the moves against the internet and messaging apps were repressive, casting them as essential to improve security and ensure national unity against an attempt by the West to sow discord.

Russia's state digital and communications watchdog, Roskomnadzor, did not reply to a request for comment.

The eight diplomats said Moscow's internet crackdown this year went much further than they had seen before in the country.

Mobile internet has been periodically shut down in some Russian regions for months, often after major Ukrainian drone attacks. By mid-January, Russia has blocked from than 400 VPNs, 70% more than late last year, according to Kommersant newspaper.

In recent weeks, the crackdown has intensified in Moscow, according to the diplomats and Reuters reporters, and the government has also moved against Dubai-based Telegram and US service WhatsApp.

Last month, Russia slowed down Telegram, which has more than 1 billion active users and is widely used in both Russia and Ukraine, and investigated its billionaire founder Pavel Durov as part of a criminal case involving accusations of terrorism.

Russian officials said Telegram had been penetrated by Ukraine and NATO member intelligence agencies, and that Russian soldiers had died as a result.

Telegram has denied it has been penetrated and said Moscow is trying to force Russians to use MAX, a state-backed messenger app that schools and universities have been told to use for parent and student chat groups.

"Each day, the authorities fabricate new pretexts to restrict Russians' access to Telegram as they seek to suppress the right to privacy and free speech," Durov told Reuters. "A sad spectacle of a state afraid of its own people."

The Kremlin also completely blocked WhatsApp last month for failing to comply with local law. The app's owner, tech giant Meta, decried the move as a backwards step for people's security in Russia.

Some young Russians vowed to evade the clampdown by switching to different VPNs as services were banned, not for politics but simply to engage with Western apps such as Instagram and Snapchat, which are restricted in Russia.

"If these quite old politicians want to block everything, why have they not made any Russian apps that are interesting?" said Andrei, who declined to give his second name due to the sensitivity of the situation.