Russia has been severely cracking down on Internet access for its population over the past few months. This is a continuation of a trend of information control that Russia has been using for years. Russia has long been banning hundreds of sites, including independent media, human rights groups, and even major global platforms, and trying to create a sovereign internet to isolate its domestic internet from global networks, all under the pretext of national security. The Kremlin’s goal with internet restrictions is to essentially control what the Russian people see, say, and believe.
The current restrictions are the continuation of this information control. The Kremlin has instituted widespread internet shutdowns and blockages across Russia, claiming that this is in an effort to defend against Ukrainian drone attacks and “terrorist” communications from Ukraine. These outages, however, have even been occurring in Russia’s Far East and Siberia, regions further from the Ukrainian border than drones can reach. Some of Russia’s border regions have even used Telegram channels in the past as methods to warn civilians about drone attacks, something that is made near impossible due to the blockages.
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