{"id":79118,"date":"2026-06-18T12:12:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T10:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libmod.de\/?p=79118"},"modified":"2026-06-18T15:12:36","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T13:12:36","slug":"putin-wants-all-encompassing-internet-censorship-can-he-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libmod.de\/en\/putin-wants-all-encompassing-internet-censorship-can-he-do-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin wants all-encom\u00adpassing internet censorship. Can he do it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=\u201c\u201d]<\/p>\n

Photo: IMAGO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=\u201c\u201d]<\/p>\n

Poli\u00adce in St Peters\u00adburg speak to protesters holding up a paper map as a symbol for Russia\u2019s internet outages.<\/em><\/p>\n

[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row css=\u201d.vc_custom_1508251598805{margin-top: 30px !important;}\u201d][vc_column width=\u201c2\/3\u201d css=\u201d.vc_custom_1508252250311{padding-right: 20px !important;}\u201d][vc_column_text css=\u201c\u201d]<\/p>\n

The Russian regime is taking internet censorship to new levels. In numerous regions, including Moscow and St Petersburg, mobile internet was switched off completely this spring under the pretext of protection against drone attacks. Author\u00adities have also begun blocking the popular Telegram app and stepped up their fight against virtual private networks (VPN), both of which allow accessing blocked online resources. How does Russian society respond?<\/h3>\n

The biggest mobile internet outage happened in early March, when central Moscow was cut off for almost three weeks, with serious conse\u00adquences for the population and the economy. While previous cutoffs were explained by protection from drone strikes (Ukrainian long-range drones have used the Russian mobile network), that incident may have been a direct reaction to the February 28 U.S. and Israeli attack on Tehran, in which Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other members of the Iranian leadership were killed.[\/vc_column_text][vc_message css=\u201c\u201d]This an updated trans\u00adlation of an article published in May<\/a> in German on our site Russland verstehen<\/em>.[\/vc_message][vc_column_text css=\u201c\u201d]<\/p>\n

Did Putin panic after Khamenei\u2019s death?<\/h2>\n

Specu\u00adlation that Putin had ordered the shutdown because he feared that he could suffer a similar fate as Khamenei was backed up by a later media report<\/a>, which said that the Kremlin had ordered a special video surveil\u00adlance service to be taken down out of security fears. The successful attack on Iran\u2019s supreme leader was appar\u00adently made possible by hacked CCTV (closed-circuit television) data.<\/p>\n

Temporary outages have continued, especially during the May 9 military parades, in which Russia commem\u00ado\u00adrates the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. Because of safety fears, this year\u2019s main parade in Moscow was shrunk to a few foot soldiers without military hardware.<\/p>\n

The shutdowns have widespread conse\u00adquences for ordinary Russians\u2019 daily lives \u2013 preventing the use of online maps, apps to order taxis and even the use of ATMs to withdraw cash.<\/p>\n

And while most people in Russia have for years grown used to partial internet censorship, the situation has escalated this year. After virtually all foreign messaging services \u2014 WhatsApp, Signal and others \u2014 were blocked, the author\u00adities began in the spring to throttle Telegram, the most important domestic provider, which also offers a route to reading lots of forbidden content. Instead, Russian users are being pressured to switch to the new state-approved Max messenger, which many people suspect of sharing personal data with the security services.<\/p>\n

Censors step up fight against VPNs<\/h2>\n

But the state is also stepping up its campaign against the most important tool to bypass state censorship \u2013 \u201cvirtual private networks\u201d (VPNs), which conceal users\u2019 locations. In late March, the government appar\u00adently<\/a> ordered national internet companies (retailers, banks and search engines) to block users detected to be using VPNs. And state censor Roskom\u00adnadzor reportedly<\/a> intends to block more than 90 percent of VPN providers in Russia by 2030. Apple, which in 2024 admitted cooper\u00adation with Russian author\u00adities, citing the risk<\/a> that it might have to cease opera\u00adtions in Russia, has been busy removing VPN services from its App Store. As of June 16, the Apple Censorship project recorded<\/a> 829 apps censored in the \u201cUtilities\u201d category, which includes VPN clients.<\/p>\n

Even simple internet searches have become risky. A law that came into force last year makes it a criminal offense<\/a> merely to search for content classified as \u201cextremist.\u201d In Russia, this poten\u00adtially includes content related the LGBT movement, the rights of Indigenous people and ethnic minorities and the human rights organi\u00adzation Memorial.<\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s Paranoia<\/h2>\n

Behind all this appar\u00adently lies Putin\u2019s deep-rooted paranoia toward the internet as a space for the free exchange of infor\u00admation. As early as 2014, the former KGB officer described the internet as a \u201cCIA project.\u201d The 73-year-old is known for using neither the internet nor mobile phones. At public appear\u00adances, Putin likes to read from handwritten notes \u2014 as he did during the online cabinet meeting on April 23, where he justified the internet restric\u00adtions as a measure against \u201cterrorist threats.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russian media reports suggest that Putin has ordered control of the internet to be passed to his cronies at the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the Soviet KGB\u2019s main successor agency. The exile outlet The Bell reported<\/a> in April that the respon\u00adsi\u00adbility now lies with the FSB department respon\u00adsible for fighting the opposition \u2014 officially, for the \u201cprotection of the consti\u00adtu\u00adtional order.\u201d<\/p>\n

The aim of the new internet policy is probably a whitelist system, in which all content is blocked by default and only state-approved services, ranging from news to banks and e\u2011commerce, remain acces\u00adsible. The recent shutdowns were appar\u00adently also used to test this model in real life.<\/p>\n

But have these growing restric\u00adtions created potential for protest? So far, the security forces seem to have largely suppressed meaningful public dissent. At the end of March, a group of young activists who went by the name \u201cRed Swan\u201d \u2014 Aly Lebed \u2014 was appar\u00adently success\u00adfully prevented from organizing nationwide protests against the blocking of Telegram.<\/p>\n

More bizarre but also telling is the story of beauty blogger Victoria Bonya. In an Instagram reel<\/a> published in April, the Monaco-based influ\u00adencer claimed that Putin knew nothing about the internet blocks and ensuing hardships, because officials were hiding these problems from him After the video received millions of views on Instagram \u2014 a platform banned in Russia \u2014 Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov publicly assured that the \u201cissues\u201d raised by Bonya were being worked on.<\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s approval problem<\/h2>\n

While a loyal blogger like Bonya, who touts the classic Russian narrative of the good Tsar being misin\u00adformed by nefarious boyars, poses little danger to the Kremlin, there is plenty of evidence that Putin\u2019s approval ratings are falling. According to state pollster VTsIOM, they dropped from just under 80 percent at the beginning of the year to 65.6 percent at the end of April \u2014 although this figure was not published<\/a> (and is still missing) on VTsIOM\u2019s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Levada Center, Russia\u2019s only independent polling institute, most recently found<\/a> a figure of 79 percent for April and May; in January it had still been 84 percent. Levada sociol\u00ado\u00adgists also recorded a sharp rise in uncer\u00adtainty among the Russian population. The share of respon\u00addents who expressed a positive view of the country\u2019s devel\u00adopment fell from 67 percent in December to just 55 percent in April.<\/p>\n

That trend also became visible among the Kremlin-controlled \u201csystemic opposition.\u201d While the ruling United Russia party\u2019s ratings dropped below 30 per cent in April, the New People party \u2014 which can be described as mock liberal \u2014 shot up to more than 13 per cent, according to VTsIOM<\/a>. Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov even warned of a new revolution in Russia.<\/p>\n

Last hope: Total censorship techni\u00adcally impossible<\/h2>\n

Clearly, this change of mood has several causes. The Russian economy is feeling both the effects of Western sanctions, new taxes and the Kremlin-imposed priority for the arms industry. And as Ukraine succeeds in sending more and more drones farther into Russia, the war is moving deeper into the awareness of the population. Aggressive internet censorship has just added another source of pain.<\/p>\n

Yet, although mobile internet has returned in places like Moscow and St Petersburg, it is clear that the new censorship regime is not going to go away soon. Some observers\u2019 hopes that the restric\u00adtions will be eased once the \u201cpragmatic camp\u201d in the Kremlin gains the upper hand have not materi\u00adalized \u2013 the pragma\u00adtists have osten\u00adsibly proven weaker than the siloviki<\/em>, the hardliners in the security services. More impor\u00adtantly, though, the central decision-maker is and remains Putin, who has clearly decided that people in Russia should use only a \u201csovereign,\u201d state-censored internet.<\/p>\n

So will the internet-savvy Russian population just put up with this?<\/p>\n

The biggest hope that remains is that a full imple\u00admen\u00adtation of Putin\u2019s vision will be techni\u00adcally impos\u00adsible. Many experts argue that the Russian internet cannot be completely censored because it has been allowed to expand uncen\u00adsored and decen\u00adtralized for too long.<\/p>\n

Others point to the fact that in the cat-and-mouse game with state censors, the IT sector may ultimately retain the upper hand. A recent article<\/a> by Deutsche Welle\u2019s Russian service argued that the number of internet users in Russia is so large that it pays off for VPN providers to keep devel\u00adoping new loopholes to get around government blocks.[\/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_column_text]