A Cat-and-Mouse Game of Russian Internet Restrictions and Evasion

Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. The Russian authorities have deepened their crackdown on popular foreign apps and have begun periodically turning off mobile internet across the country, after spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build up censorship technology that they plan to expand. Here is how the government is going about its assault on internet freedom and what Russians are doing to evade the ever-expanding restrictions. Russia’s Methods of Control A new law means that the authorities do not need to provide any justification when cutting off mobile data. They are making “white lists” of sites and apps that should remain available during an internet shutdown. There isn’t a single list. Instead, there are several compiled by the digital transformation ministry and by Russian mobile operators, with no clear criteria. A New York Times analysis found that about half of the top 50 websites in Russia by traffic, according to Similarweb.com , are not on the lists and would be blocked, including all foreign services. A type of analysis called deep packet inspection is the core of the internet filtration. Each Russian internet service provider is required to install hardware managed by Roskomnadzor, the telecommunications regulator, that analyzes data passing through the network and kills forbidden connections. This year, Russia plans to increase the monitoring to 100 percent of traffic. Moscow has also improved its throttling, which slows connections so much that it looks as if a site or app is malfunctioning. After the authorities began throttling YouTube in 2024 , Moscow suggested that the platform’s failure to update its Russian infrastructure was to blame. Google, which owns YouTube, said that was untrue. Cloudflare, a U.S. company that helps secure 20 to 30 percent of global websites, began a protocol in 2023 to prevent networks from spying on user activity. In response, Russia began throttling all websites using the service. Now, often only the first 16 kilobytes of a site using Cloudflare load in Russia. “This shows that they are still stepping up their game quite a bit and, I would say, are on the leading edge of even the current standards being developed,” said Arturo Filastò, the founder of the Open Observatory of Network Interference, which monitors internet censorship. Russia has created a national Domain Name System for easier blocking of websites, and plans to create a database of I.M.E.I. numbers, the individual IDs on cellular devices, which could allow the authorities to block specific users’ SIM cards. Moscow continues to pass laws regulating content. Service providers can report a user who searched for material deemed “extremist,” which can result in a fine. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber?  Log in . Want all of The Times?  Subscribe . Related Content Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT