“Look, guys the only space the Russians have
to talk about Ukraine. and what is going on in
Russia. is Facebook,” Soldatov, now exiled in
London. wrote on Facebook in the war’s first
week. “You cannot just, like, kill our access.”
Facebook didn’t, although the Kremlin soon
picked up that baton, throttling both Facebook
and Twitter so badly they are effectively
unreachable on the Russian internet. Putin has
also blocked access to both Western media and
independent news sites in the country, and a
new law criminalizes spreading information that
contradicts the government’s line. The Kremlin
said it would also restrict access to Instagram.
Yet the Kremlin’s latest censorship efforts have
also revealed serious shortcomings in the
government’s bigger plans to straightjacket the
internet. Any Russian with a modicum of tech
smarts can circumvent Kremlin efforts to starve
Russians of fact.
That puts providers of internet bandwidth and
associated services sympathetic to Ukraine’s
plight in a tough spot. On one side, they face
public pressure to punish the Russian state and
economic reasons to limit services at a time when
bills might well go unpaid. On the other, they’re
wary of helping stifle a free flow of information
that can counter Kremlin disinformation — for
instance, the state’s claim that Russia’s military is
heroically “liberating” Ukraine from fascists.
Amazon Web Services, a major provider of cloud
computing services, continues to operate in
Russia, although it says it’s not taking on any
new customers. Both Cloudflare, which helps
shield websites from denial-of-service attacks
and malware, and Akamai, which boosts site