How Putin's regime is throttling the internet in Russia

Last month, the Kremlin took another big step towards its goal of limiting access to online information that the Russian state does not control.

It gradually blocked access to the country's most popular messenger app, Telegram, previously used by more than 100 million Russians, and followed a ban on WhatsApp in February.

Many Western websites and news services were banned in Russia after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 as the Kremlin moved to block reporting by Western news agencies on the war, particularly reports on Russia's destruction of Ukrainian cities and high Russian casualty rates at the front.

Facebook and Instagram, both owned by Meta, were banned by Russian authorities just weeks into the full-scale invasion.

Over the past year, authorities have gone a step further, throttling or completely shutting down internet access in central and eastern regions of Russia, and in regions close to Ukraine.

Only approved websites on the Russian government's so-called 'white list' are fully available to internet users in the country.

But the current internet blackouts and restrictions on messenger apps have affected residents in Moscow and St Petersburg, prompting many young Russians in those cities to criticise the measures on (unrestricted) Russian social media platforms.

The online bans have provoked rare episodes of public dissent in President Vladimir Putin's authoritarian Russia.

Prominent pro-war Russian bloggers and Sergey Mironov, the leader of small party in the Russian parliament and who toes the Kremlin’s line, have also criticised the block on Telegram.

Yet those who criticise the restrictions are careful not to level blame at Mr Putin or refer to Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Instead, criticism is directed at authorities in general, without naming anyone.

Kremlin officials have said that the internet restrictions are temporary and necessary to prevent drone attacks on the country - a pretext it has repeated in the lead up to today’s Victory Day parade in Moscow, marking the 81st anniversary of the Soviet Union's defeat of Nazi Germany.

Mr Putin said in late April that the internet restrictions were needed to defend the country against terrorist attacks.

A Moscow-based film professional in his 40s told RTÉ News that people discuss the internet restrictions "constantly".

"Most are frustrated because this kind of communication has become essential to modern life," said the film worker who preferred not to be cited by name, but said his request for anonymity was not because he was afraid of the reaction of authorities.

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"Mobile internet has become unpredictable," he said.

"Sometimes everything works normally, and sometimes entire services become unstable for no obvious reason".

All three messenger services use end-to-end encryption and became the go-to method for journalists speaking to interviewees inside Russia in recent years.

"The Kremlin has always wanted to create a sovereign information space modelled on the Chinese example," Igor Gretskiy, an expert on Russian foreign policy based in Estonia, told RTÉ News.

"People in the Kremlin still believe that the West can influence Russians through the internet," he said.

China’s communist authorities block foreign search engines and websites, enabling authorities to create China’s own isolated internet space where political terms and key words that refer to protests and historical events, like the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, are blocked entirely or filtered.

That is a version of the internet that the Kremlin would like to emulate but it has so far held off on blocking all Western platforms and sites entirely.

Although they live in an autocracy, Russians were able to freely access most of the global internet since the late 1990s and, like internet users in democracies, have been watching videos on YouTube and using Google for the past 20 years.

Over the past decade, those freedoms have been eroded by Roskomnadzor.

The censor launched a national blacklist system in 2012, which ordered internet providers to block certain sites.

It was a sign of things to come.

In 2019, Russia’s parliament passed the country’s Sovereign Internet law, enabling Roskomnadzor to cut off international connectivity or services such as cloud providers.

In 2024, Russian authorities required internet providers to slow down video download speeds on YouTube.

This so-called 'throttling’ worked, and many internet users switched to watching videos on Russian platforms like VK or Rutube.

The Kremlin's strategy is to isolate the Russian-language internet, also known as 'RuNet', from the rest of the globe’s internet and to limit the use of messenger apps, like Telegram or WhatsApp, that the state cannot control.

The successful moves against YouTube, believes Mr Gretskiy, a research fellow at Estonia’s Centre for International Centre for Defence and Security, may have "inspired security services" to go after Telegram and WhatsApp.

Last August, Roskomnadzor restricted video and audio services on both Telegram and WhatsApp, stating that the measure was a security precaution to protect against terrorist threats.

However, the measures affected fewer than 20% of users and did not force people to abandon the apps.

Since then, the Kremlin moved to fully restrict access to Telegram and WhatsApp in the country.

In place of those messenger apps, Russian authorities want its citizens to use a new government-backed app, Max, which was launched by Russian tech firm VK last year.

The app is pre-installed on all newly purchased mobile phoned in Russia.

Pro-Kremlin news outlets, like Izvestia, say that more than 85 million Russians are now using Max.

Like WeChat in China, Max is a kind of super-app where users not only text and call friends, but pay bills, verify their identity and file government documents via the app.

WeChat complies strictly with China’s censorship rules and offers limited privacy according to many tech experts.

Tests conducted by security experts last August and commissioned by Forbes found that Max monitored users’ activity with "excessive tracking", while The Moscow Times, an English-language news service, reported last year that local housing and education authorities in Russia were urging the public to switch to Max for any dealings with their departments.

It sounds similar to the way Chinese authorities have created a system where not using WeChat is unavoidable.

The film worker that RTÉ News spoke to said he was "still holding out" on downloading Max.

Despite the open criticism by the Russian public of current internet restrictions, there is little sign so far that the issue could grow into a mass movement against the regime.

Russian society, said Mr Gretskiy, is highly fragmented and more likely to "adapt to the restrictions".

As for Mr Putin, he reportedly avoids using the internet.

In a pre-recorded video message last week, Russia's leader read from pages of hand-written notes.

It was a strange image for a 21st century leader to project, and reinforced the notion that Russia's leader is either sceptical or paranoid about technology.

A leaked document by a European intelligence agency, details of which were published this week by CNN, reflect an increased level of paranoia inside the Kremlin following a number of assassinations of top Russian military staff last year.

The report states that those who work closely with Mr Putin can only do so using phones without internet access, and that the Russian leader is spending an increasing amount of time in underground bunkers.

Fears of a coup also circulate the Kremlin, according to the report.

For now, Mr Putin remains firmly in charge but the current wave of internet restrictions reflect a regime that is increasingly obsessed with creating a Russian-only version of the internet for its citizens and where criticism of the Kremlin's war in Ukraine is completely stifled.

Kremlin officials have said the restrictions are temporary, but while the war in Ukraine continues, so too are the internet shutdowns by Russian authorities likely to persist.