Another Step Towards The Russian Splinternet
Over the last few weeks, as Russia invaded Ukraine, you've probably heard some version of the story about how carefully Putin prepared for economic sanctions against the country. Whether or not those preparations actually have helped protect Russia is another story, but it wasn't just the economics part of the equation that Russia was preparing for. We've written a few times over the past few years about how Russia was working to make sure it could disconnect its internet from the rest of the world's internet - often referred to as the Russian splinternet." And now it's happening.
Beyond things like blocking services like Facebook, there are still questions about the underlying infrastructure of the internet and how it handles this war. We've already discussed why it's a terrible idea for Ukraine to ask internet infrastructure operations, including ICANN and RIPE to disconnect Russia from the internet, but that's not stopping other internet infrastructure players from making questionable moves. At the domain registrar level, Namecheap has told Russian customers to look elsewhere for domains, and then late last week internet backbone provider Cogent announced that it would be cutting off service to Russia.
US internet infrastructure company Cogent Communications said on Friday that it is ending relationships with its Russian customers, including the state-owned Russian telecoms Rostelecom and TransTelekom. The global internet is interdependent, and Russia has other backbone providers besides Cogent to stay connected to the world, but the company is one of the biggest. Cogent said it weighed the risks that some people in Russia will lose global connectivity against the possibility that the Russian government will benefit from Cogent's service in mounting disinformation campaigns and hacks against Ukrainian targets. Our goal is not to hurt anyone. It's just to not empower the Russian government to have another tool in their war chest," Cogent CEO Dave Schaeffer told The Washington Post.
Of course, Russia seems perfectly fine with this turn of events. Many of those earlier preparations are playing out now as Russia makes moves to fully disconnect itself from the wider internet.
#Russia began active preparations for disconnection from the global Internet
- NEXTA (@nexta_tv) March 6, 2022
No later than March 11, all servers and domains must be transferred to the #Russian zone. In addition, detailed data on the network infrastructure of the sites is being collected. pic.twitter.com/wOCdRqOJej
While some argue this is a good thing, it does seem likely to have a wide and lasting impact. Within Russia the lack of information from the outside world (and from inside Ukraine) seems to be part of what's driving support for the invasion. Konstantinos Komaitis highlights the video of a Russian soldier explaining how they were duped into believing Ukraine was controlled by fascists and they'd be greeted as liberators, and he now realizes it's all been lies. He appears to have been captured, so perhaps you can't believe him to be genuine in his comments - and who knows if you can trust the translation - but he sure looks pretty genuine as he goes on for quite some time highlighting how the lack of information in Russia is what brainwashed many.
This
- Konstantinos Komaitis/ , PhD (@kkomaitis) March 6, 2022video is chilling for many reasons: but the one thing that this soldier keeps coming back to is how little information and how many lies Russians have been fed about this war. Do you get now why shutting down the Internet in Russia is an absolutely terrible idea? https://t.co/3xehcF9UGq
There are reasons to use sanctions to pressure Putin and his cronies, but having Russia cut itself off the internet - whether by its own hand or by organizations trying to engage in their own kinds of sanctions - seems likely to do more harm than good.