Russia is tightening web censorship ahead of this weekend’s elections which are almost certain to offer President Vladimir Putin one other six years in power, further limiting one of the last spaces for political activism, independent information and freedom of speech.
Russian authorities have stepped up attacks on digital tools used to bypass web blockades, restricted access to WhatsApp and other messaging apps in specific areas, and expanded a program to chop off web sites and online services and businesses which have been affected, in line with civil society groups and researchers.
They say Russia is popping to techniques beyond established hacking and digital surveillance practices, taking a more systemic approach to changing the way the domestic web operates. In doing so, the country is adopting methods pioneered by China and Iran, creating an authoritarian model of web regulation that contrasts with the more open approach of the United States.
Russia “has reached a new level of blocking over the last six months,” said Mikhail Klimarev, a Russian telecommunications expert and executive director of the Internet Protection Society, a civil society group.
Internet censorship has been growing in Russia for over a decade, but the scale and effectiveness of the latest blockades surprised even technical experts. These techniques add to the infrastructure of repression built by Putin to maintain protesters and opponents in line and supply the country with a eating regimen of state propaganda.
The moves come at a critical time for Putin, who’s coping with memorials to Alexei A. Navalny, the Kremlin’s most outspoken critic, after his death last month in a Russian prison, in addition to the fallout from the ongoing war in Ukraine. On Friday, Russians may also start going to the polls to vote in the presidential elections, Putin’s victory is nearly certain, and strengthened Internet control shows that the government doesn’t plan to take any risks.
Roskomnadzor, Russia’s essential web regulator, didn’t reply to a request for comment.
By intensifying attacks on the Internet, Russia followed the example of China, where Internet access is severely limited and social media are closely monitored.
In 2016, Fang Binxing, the creator of China’s Great Firewall – the system that censors the Internet in that country, met together with his Russian counterparts. Relations have developed since then, in line with documents containing leaked meeting notes reviewed by The New York Times. The documents show how web officials from each countries met in 2017 and 2019 to share information on fighting encryption, blocking foreign web sites and cracking down on protests.
The lessons learned from the discussions have now been applied in Russia.
In January, when protests shook the industrial province of Bashkortostan, officials effectively restricted local access to WhatsApp and Telegram. Similar outages occurred recently in the Dagestan and Yakutia regions, said Klimarev, who tracks web censorship in Russia and runs a company called VPN Generator.
Other restrictions were imposed after Navalny’s death last month. During Navalny’s funeral in Moscow, mobile network speeds were reduced in nearby areas, making it difficult to post videos and photos on social media, Klimarev said.
In recent weeks, Russian technology firms and web activists have also reported latest government efforts to discover web traffic patterns originating from virtual private networks, or VPNs – software designed to bypass blockades.
Roskomnadzor identifies VPNs large and small and closes connections, closing many recent loopholes which have allowed Russians to access global news sites or banned social media sites resembling Instagram. The approach, considered more sophisticated than previous tactics and requiring specialized technology, mimics what China does in sensitive political moments.
Some VPNs are still available in Russia, but they have gotten harder to search out. The act, which entered into force on March 1, prohibited promoting such services.
“If we look back to early 2022, it wasn’t that difficult to find a VPN,” said Stanislav Shakirov, technical director of Roskomsvoboda, a civil society group supporting the open web, adding that the change shows how quickly Russia’s capabilities have improved.
Russia can also be changing the way it censors web sites and online services. After relying totally on telecom operators to dam sites on a published blacklist, authorities now look like relying more heavily on centralized technology to more discreetly block and slow traffic from Moscow, researchers say.
Officials look like balancing the have to control the Internet with technical constraints and fear of angering the public by restricting popular online platforms resembling YouTube and Telegram which are used for messaging, entertainment and communication. The government also faced engineering challenges, including: earlier this year, many major web sites went down for about 90 minutes, which experts attributed to a failed test of a latest blocking system.
Experts say the authorities were almost definitely preparing for events that might disrupt the elections this weekend. Navalny’s supporters have called for people to go to the polls at noon on Sunday to vote against Putin, hoping that photos of long lines will show the world the scale of discontent. The government could undermine the plan if it succeeds in stopping the images from being distributed.
The techniques are based on a Chinese-inspired playbook that becomes increasingly sophisticated every year. During high-level meetings between China and Russia in 2017, Russian officials sought advice on methods to dam web sites, restrict access to the global Internet and construct a government-controlled Internet like the Great Firewall, in line with transcripts and meeting notes. network. that were made available online by DDoSecrets, a group that publishes leaked documents.
Discussions also included find out how to combat the growth of encrypted data flows, targeting larger, popular messaging apps and what to do about services like VPNs that may bypass blocks. During the exchange, China stressed that it uses real name registration – a system that requires the use of a government ID to register for mobile services and social media – as a technique to control people.
China and Russia must “form the necessary connections to jointly counter current threats in the cyber environment,” Alexander Zharov, head of Roskomnadzor, told visiting Chinese officials in 2017, in line with a leaked copy of the speech.
In recent months, VPN blockades in Russia have gone further than ever before.
“The level of blocking we see in Russia far exceeds what we see in China,” said Yegor Sak, founder of Windscribe, a Canadian VPN provider used in Russia to bypass web blocks.
In the case of WhatsApp and Telegram, Russia has taken a different approach than China. After years of services largely being left to their very own devices, authorities recently decided to limit access to the app at key moments of political instability. In Bashkortostan, a production and mining center with a large indigenous population, authorities temporarily cut off access to Telegram and WhatsApp in January in response to protests that began after the arrest of a local environmental activist.
Meta, the owner of WhatsApp, declined to comment. Telegram didn’t reply to a request for comment.
According to posts on VK, Russia’s essential social media site, the outages have turn into such a major problem that individuals have left messages on local politicians’ social media pages to get the services turned back on because they need them in their each day lives.
“I can’t contact my school, I can’t talk to my doctor or my family,” one user said. “Give us back WhatsApp and Telegram,” wrote one other.
The blocks were “very significant” because messaging apps utilized by hundreds of thousands of people were seen as far more difficult to disrupt, in line with Ksenia Ermoshina, an authority on Russian censorship and surveillance technology. She said telecom firms were almost definitely cooperating under government orders.
The experiment suggests a rise in capability that may be used in future moments of crisis, potentially limiting the development of political movements.
“People protest when they see other people protesting,” Ms. Ermoshina said. But by having the ability to cut off entire regions, the Russian government can “better control regionalist and separatist movements” and forestall the spread of demonstrations or other types of anger.
The holes for unregulated Internet traffic are slowly being plugged. Analysts say the government is requiring firms to put in latest monitoring equipment at telecommunications points where transnational web cables reach Russia.
“The Soviet Union is back,” said Mazay Banzaev, operator of a Russian VPN called Amnezia. “Total censorship returns with it.”
Anatoly Kurmanayev reporting contributed.
