The Russian state spent a long time trying to fish out “improper” materials from the Russian internet. It surgically burned out links, blocked websites, and banned social networks. This was classic censorship: with registries, orders, and block pages. At the same time, functionaries came to understand that it is far more effective not to ban individual pages, but to take control of internet access as a whole. That is how Russia travelled the path from blocking individual resources to centralised traffic management, mobile internet shutdowns, and “white lists”, where not the entire internet works, but only what the state has permitted to remain switched on.
The fat 2000s: a foundation that pretended to be boring
Legally, the architecture of internet censorship was not built from scratch. The foundation was poured back in the “fat 2000s”, and at first this construction seemed purely technical, devoid of any repressive flavour.
The first pillar was Federal Law No. 149-FZ “On Information, Information Technologies and the Protection of Information” of 27 July 2006. It is into this law that registries, blockings, and obligations for internet companies would later be stitched.
The second pillar is Federal Law No. 126-FZ “On Communications” of 7 July 2003. Initially, this was simply a dry highway code for telecom operators: how to lay cables, how to provide services, what rights subscribers have — that is, how to ensure communications. Later, norms describing how to cut off those communications entirely would be inserted into it.
It was these acts that became the basis for the future “sovereign internet”.
2019–2020: the state takes the control panel
The turn came with the adoption of Federal Law No. 90-FZ of 1 May 2019 “On Amendments to the Federal Law ‘On Communications’ and the Federal Law ‘On Information, Information Technologies and the Protection of Information’”. We note that the law was adopted almost exclusively by the votes of United Russia; the parliamentary opposition mostly voted against it.
Officially, the law was sold to society as protection from external threats and, simultaneously, a safety mechanism in case of a hypothetical disconnection of Russia from the global network.
But both legally and in practice, it carried out a quiet revolution. Article 65.1 was written into the Law “On Communications”, which legalised direct centralised network management by Roskomnadzor.
The law obliged providers to implement so-called TSPU — technical means of countering threats. Simply put, TSPU are a kind of “smart gateway” that the state installed on the “pipes” through which data flows. Now, using a system of these gateways, traffic can be centrally blocked, redirected, filtered, and metered. With the help of TSPU, the internet was supposed to transform from a space for the free exchange of data into a managed engineering network.
The rules of this new world were cemented without unnecessary noise. Russian Federation Government Resolution No. 127 of 12.02.2020 “On Approval of the Rules for Centralised Management of the Public Communications Network” was adopted, along with numerous Roskomnadzor orders specifying the procedure for executing the law.
2021: “digital asthma” and the social wrapper
The first baptism of fire for the new architecture was the story of the throttling of Twitter in March 2021. Roskomnadzor did not block the service entirely, but it developed “digital asthma”: images would not load, video froze, the feed updated with a grinding halt. Technically, this worked crudely and, as a rule, was easily circumvented via VPN, but, nevertheless, the state showed that it could not only kill websites, but also make them inconvenient, toxic from the standpoint of user experience.
Simultaneously, the “side effects” of infrastructural control manifested themselves: due to overlaps in domain names, completely unrelated resources began to fall off along with Twitter, for example, websites containing the letter combination `t.co`.: reddit.com, microsoft.com, and even the propaganda outlet Russia Today — rt.com.
Already in May 2021, Roskomnadzor stated that Twitter had removed more than 91% of prohibited information, after which the agency lifted the throttling on home networks but kept it on mobile devices.
In the summer of the same year, Federal Law No. 319-FZ of 02.07.2021 “On Amendments to the Federal Law ‘On Communications’” was issued. The law was adopted by the State Duma unanimously, by all factions, with no votes against or abstentions.
Operators were obliged to give citizens free access to socially significant resources (Gosuslugi, websites of state agencies, etc.). Which at first glance looked like care, but in fact the law introduced the concept of privileged zones. The state, for the first time at the legislative level, divided the internet into the “chosen” (if you like, oprichnina) and “all the rest”. This was not yet a “white list” in its current form, but the ideological matrix for it had already been created.
2022: what happened?
The start of the full-scale war with Ukraine in February 2022 completely changed the rules of the game. If before that the authorities were preparing to restrict internet access slowly, evolutionarily, now emergency measures were needed, prompted by the necessity of introducing military censorship (because without censorship it would have been far harder to justify both the necessity of the war and the methods of waging it).
On 4 March 2022, at the demand of the Prosecutor General’s Office, access to Twitter was fully restricted. On the same day, Facebook was completely blocked. On 14 March, Instagram came under blocking. Finally, on 21 March, the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow recognised Meta’s activities as extremist and banned Facebook and Instagram on the territory of Russia, leaving WhatsApp outside the scope of the ruling for the time being.
Simultaneously with the blockings, Laws No. 31-FZ and No. 32-FZ of 4 March 2022 were adopted — on the “discrediting” of the army and “fakes” about the army. They sharply increased the personal risks for those who continued to speak critically about the war.
2022 became the year when the technical infrastructure of blockings merged with criminal and administrative liability, and global communication platforms disappeared from normal access.
2024–2025: surgery on protocols
A genuine stress test for the new infrastructure was the suffocation of YouTube and periodic attacks on messengers. If in 2021 the authorities were merely testing the “brightness control” on Twitter, by 2024 the TSPU had already learned, without a direct ban, to quite effectively strangle the world’s main video hosting service. The service did not end up on a blacklist, but its traffic was forced through the eye of a needle: videos froze, previews would not load.
Unlike the blocking of Facebook or Instagram, the blocking of YouTube took place outside official procedures: neither a court ruling banning YouTube nor a Roskomnadzor order to “throttle” the video hosting service was published. Officially, Roskomnadzor and Rostelecom explained the deterioration of the service by the degradation of the Google Global Cache infrastructure after Google’s departure from Russia. Google itself denied that the problems were caused by the company’s actions or technical failures. At the same time, Russian officials and Roskomnadzor itself simultaneously spoke of YouTube’s violations and of the state having “instruments” to influence the platform — that is, they indirectly admitted that they themselves were the source of the problems.
With messengers, the state went even further, applying the “amputation” of undesirable protocols. The TSPU learned to cut out not the entire service, but only its individual functions — for example, disabling VoIP calls in WhatsApp or Telegram, while leaving the ability to exchange text messages.
Officially, Roskomnadzor cited certain materials from law enforcement agencies and declared a fight against fraud, extortion, and the involvement of citizens in subversive and terrorist activities. At the same time, the agency separately emphasised that other functions of the messengers were not being restricted. In other words, the user could still see the application and exchange text messages, but one of the key communication functions — voice calls — was switched off.
In this way, Roskomnadzor ran in the TSPU on YouTube and messengers, and also prepared the ground for total shutdowns, when the network began to be switched off entirely, leaving only white lists.
2025: the internet in reverse
In the fourth year of the war, Ukraine was ever more actively carrying strikes into the Russian rear, using strike drones against military airfields, oil refineries, depots, defence industry enterprises, and other infrastructure. The Russian authorities responded not only with air defence and electronic warfare means, but also with a method of “protection” new to most citizens — mobile internet shutdowns.
The first large-scale shutdowns fell on 7–9 May 2025. On the eve of Victory Day, mobile internet practically stopped working in Moscow, Moscow Oblast, and a number of regions of the Central Federal District. Formally, this was explained by security against the backdrop of drone attacks and preparations for holiday events. After 1 June 2025, when Ukrainian drones, during Operation “Cobweb”, attacked Russian strategic aviation airfields deep inside the country, the scale of restrictions grew sharply. According to data from the “Na Svyazi” project, if 69 mobile internet shutdowns were recorded in May, then in June there were already 662, and in July — 2,099. Thus a temporary measure “for the period of a UAV threat” became a new norm “just in case”.
There is a connection between the effectiveness of drone operations and the shutdown of mobile internet, but it is not as straightforward as follows from the official explanations. UAVs can indeed use the internet to transmit video, telemetry, or adjust their route, but this is only one of the possible channels. Drones can also use satellite navigation, or they can simply fly along a pre-programmed route, adjusting flight parameters based on terrain data stored in memory, in the latest iterations possibly using artificial intelligence — that is, they can navigate without a constant connection to the operator. Therefore, a mass shutdown of mobile internet can hinder the work of a certain portion of drones, but it is not a universal way to stop them.
Moreover, the practice of shutdowns soon ceased to fit within the logic of countering military threats altogether. Shutdowns were also recorded in regions where there were no reports of UAV strikes at all. Thus, using anti-drone measures as a pretext, a new communications management regime was established: under the pretext of security, the state acquires the ability to temporarily switch off mobile internet over large territories, leaving citizens only those services that it itself deems necessary.
At the beginning of September 2025, the white list concept laid down in 2021 began working at full strength. The Ministry of Digital Development formed a list of services that are obliged to work even when the rest of the network is switched off by the state. It included Yandex, Gosuslugi, marketplaces, the Mir payment system, and loyal social networks. Telegram, WhatsApp, and Google did not make it into this “digital bunker”.
The logic was turned upside down. Previously, the internet was open by default, and blockings were exceptions (black lists). Now, if the network is switched off by decision of the authorities, users can still retain uninterrupted access to certain services, but the services themselves must earn such a privilege and be entered into a special state registry — white lists.
While society was getting used to the shutdowns, the rules of the game continued to be refined in the quiet of offices. The initial Russian Federation Government Resolution and Roskomnadzor orders were replaced by Russian Federation Government Resolution No. 1667 of 27.10.2025 “On Approval of the Rules for Centralised Management of the Public Communications Network”. It directly postulates: “Centralised management is carried out by the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media.” Roskomnadzor was definitively confirmed in the role of the chief dispatcher who decides where traffic flows and where the plug is inserted.
2026: legalising “yanking the cord”
The final chord in this symphony of controllability sounded at the end of the winter of 2026. Federal Law No. 33-FZ of 20.02.2026 “On Amendments to Articles 46 and 68 of the Federal Law ‘On Communications’” was adopted. With the exception of the New People faction, which voted against, all other State Duma factions unanimously supported the adoption of the law.
The amendments are so simple and uncompromising that they are worth quoting.
First, operators are now obliged to “suspend the provision of communication services upon receipt of demands from federal security service bodies”.
Second, “the telecom operator shall not bear liability for the improper performance of obligations (if this) is connected with the fulfilment (...) of demands of federal security service bodies”.
Previously, the official explanations for internet shutdowns were “technical failures” or “line works”, for which the provider faced a lawsuit from the subscriber. Now the provider has a legal basis for ceasing the provision of paid services. The provider has turned from a merchant into a convoy guard.
Thus, the law solved the formal task of providing a legal basis for the established practice of internet shutdowns. Before this, the formal public chain was opaque: regional authorities, security agencies, anti-terrorist commissions, operational headquarters, and operators could participate in making and executing decisions, but the exact documents for specific episodes were usually not disclosed. With the adoption of the law, a direct construction appeared: if there is a demand from FSB bodies, the operator is obliged to suspend the service and does not answer to the subscriber for its non-provision.
Result: the internet as a privilege
The state no longer needs to endlessly block thousands of “improper” websites, mirrors, and links. It has built a system in which the very right of a citizen to access the internet becomes conditional. If mobile internet is switched off in a region at the demand of the FSB, and the user is left with only a white list, then the need to censor anything at all disappears by itself.
The Russian internet has turned into a specific state service: one set of websites works today, another tomorrow, the day after tomorrow the connection may disappear entirely “for security reasons”. The digital well-being of the user depends on the list of what is permitted at the current moment in time. And the most alarming detail of this transformation is that society is getting used to living in a reality where connectivity is no longer a guarantee, but a temporary mercy.