As international politics' developments heavily weigh on Russia's domestic politics, the internet is placed on top of the list of "threats" that the government must tackle, through an avalanche of legislations aiming at gradually isolating the Russian internet from the global infrastructure. The growth of the Russian internet market during the last couple of years is likely to remain secondary to the "sovereignisation" of Russia's internet. This article aims at understanding these contradictory trends, in an international context in which internet governance is at a crossroads, and major internet firms come under greater regulatory scrutiny from governments. The Russian 'dictatorship-of-the-law' paradigm is all but over: it is deploying online, with potentially harmful consequences for Russia's attempts to attract foreign investments in the internet sector, and for users' rights online.
At the latest Russian Internet Governance Forum – a gathering of the business community, officials, and the civil society to discuss internet regulation – the “sovereignty” of the Russian internet featured prominently amongst the key topics discussed. The author participated to the debates (Moscow, 7 April 2015).
Another one, famous for his legal haste once a member of Parliament:
The current stand-off between Russia and the West over Ukraine has posed new geopolitical challenges which have added to the general defensive leitmotiv in the Russian domestic internet governance with a tighter grip on online communications and transactions, which often contradicts the announced goals of economic stimulation in the information and communications technologies (ICTs) area as one of the vehicles of non-commodity based growth. Alexandra Kulikova, “RuNet 2014: Top 10 Trends on the Russian Internet”, PIR Center, 25 December 2014.
As the past two years have shown, the economic potential of the ICT and internet-dependent industries is given due credit: internet penetration in Russia reached 59,27percent people in 2014, compared with 29 percent people in 2009 Data extracted from internetlivestats.com as of 1 October 2015. In 2014 Russia had the sixth internet population in the world. The author wish to point out that the Russian Association of Electronic Communications (RAEC) indicates an internet penetration rate of 68,7 percent people in Russia in 2014. Data provided to the author by the Russian Association of Electronic Communications. In 2013 the internet economy accounted for 1,6 percent of Russia’s GDP, according to a joint study by RAEC and Moscow’s Higher School of Economics ( See David Cadier and Margot Light (eds.), Russia’s Foreign Policy: Ideas, Domestic Politics and External Relations, Basingstoke: Palgrave Mcmillan, 2015.
In an international context in which internet governance is at a crossroads, and major internet firms come under greater regulatory pressure from governments, this article aims at comprehending the contradictory trends that are shaping the development of the Russian internet. The Russian “dictatorship of the law” Once a motto of Vladimir Putin's regime in the early 2000s, “dictatorship of the law” may be understood as the oscillation between strong, arbitrary state rule and the facade of legal innovations. In seizing power in 2000 Putin meant to restore federal authority over Russia’s regions, part of what he called the strengthening of vertical executive power. The expression is in obvious analogy to the Marxist concept of “dictatorship of the proletariat”.
As a relatively young nation-state that has been experiencing, since the chaotic 1990s transition to a free market economy and pluralism, a potent feeling of insecurity, Russia has been adopting a threat-oriented lens towards the internet. Julien Nocetti, “Contest and conquest: Russia and global internet governance”,
However, officials have long paid a modest attention to RuNet's development, supporting its benefits for the country's economy while tolerating some spaces online for dissenting activities. See BruceEtling, For a comprehensive analysis of early restrictive legislations over the internet in Russia, see Marcus Alexander, “The Internet and Democratization: The Development of Russian Internet Policy”,
The authorities’ approach radically changed from 2011 when they observed citizens from some Arab countries mobilising and coordinating their protest actions through networked technologies. These events – known as “Arab Spring” – did profoundly impact the minds of Russian political elites. Reflecting on the sustained use of digital technologies – microblogs such as Twitter, video platforms such as YouTube and social networks such as Facebook – in the revolutionary processes in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, the Kremlin and Russian law enforcement agencies started to monitor closely the impact of the political use of networked technologies upon social mobilisation and democratic transition. Julien Nocetti, “
These international developments inspired many in Russia who demanded substantial political changes after a decade of Vladimir Putin’s rule characterised by rising living standards for the population guaranteed by the state in exchange of (most) political freedoms. See Emily Parker, Maria Pipenko, “Russian Blogosphere as a Public Sphere”, Marcus Alexander, See Alexey Sidorenko, “Russian Digital Dualism: Changing Society, Manipulative State”, Ifri, Tatiana Kastoueva-Jean and Julien Nocetti, “
However, the ‘power of networks’ was mostly used at a local level: blogs were the only way to draw the attention of authorities and make them act, when usual means did not work due to the total lack of attention of politicians to the population’s daily problems and the level of corruption. See Florian Töpfl, “Managing public outrage: Power, scandal, and new media in contemporary Russia”,
The 2011-2012 election cycle in Russia – a parliamentary ballot in December 2011 and a presidential vote in March 2012 – reawakened Russian leaders' anxiety over the internet's potential for political disruption. Indeed, the political leadership feared a ripple effect in the countryside, as mass protests in its biggest cities – primarily Moscow and St Petersburg – were mostly coordinated on and facilitated by the use of digital technologies. Nicole Bode and Andrei Makarychev, “The new social media in Russia: political blogging by the government and the opposition”, However, television has so far remained the main source of information for a majority of Russians. Russia would be split between a “TV nation”, that gathers Vladimir Putin’s traditional electoral basis (state workers, civil servants and pensioners), and an “internet nation”, essentially made up of the young, urban and educated Russians. To some extent Dmitry Medvedev has used technology to distinguish himself and his image from that of his mentor. See on that aspect Julien Nocetti, “
The series of restrictive laws discussed and passed at the State Duma since VladimirPutin’s return to the Kremlin in May 2012 are thus no coincidence. The first of these – which drew heavy media coverage – created a ‘single register’ of banned websites that contain child pornography, advocacy of drug abuse, suicide advocacy, and came into force on 1November 2012. Roskomnadzor, the federal service for supervision of telecommunications, information technologies and mass communications, Often described as the “media watchdog” or the “big censorship agency”, Roskomnadzor was founded in 2008 when it separated from the Federal Service for Supervision of Mass Media, Telecommunications, and Protection of Cultural Heritage. It took over the oversight of all media and communications, including the allocation of radio waves, the construction of communication links, and the issuing of warnings to media sources that violate laws. See Daniil Turovsky, “This is how Russian Internet censorship works”, Meduza.io, 13 August 2015, available at Milton Mueller,
Members of both parliamentary houses have been promoting further legal initiatives, and the most prominent Russian rulers regularly speak out in favour of greater internet regulation and more highly organised policing structures. See for instance “ Julien Nocetti, “Digital Kremlin: power and the internet in Russia”, Ifri, The crisis in Ukraine began in November 2013 when then-president Viktor Yanukovych suspended preparations for the implementations of an association agreement with the European Union. This decision resulted in mass protests by its opponents, known as the "Euromaidan" movement. After months of such protests, Yanukovych was ousted by the protesters in February 2014. Unrest then enveloped the largely Russian-speaking eastern and southern regions of Ukraine. An ensuing political crisis in Crimea resulted in the annexation of the peninsula by Russia on 18 March 2015. Subsequently, unrest in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts evolved into a war between the post-revolutionary Ukrainian government and pro-Russian insurgents. The dispute over Ukraine has had also a Russian-Western dimension, as several rounds of economic sanctions against Russia have been adopted by the U.S., the EU and Japan since March 2014. See Richard Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands, London: I.B. Tauris, 2014. The data can be accessed at
Discussions also focused on granting the police extrajudicial power to block access to internet anonymisers and “the means of accessing anonymous networks, such as TOR.” Maria Kolomychenko, Roman Rozhkov, Vladislav Noviy, “ Ibid. See also Lawrence Alexander, “Tor Use in Russia Spiking in Response to Kremlin’s Censorship Efforts”, Global Voices Advocacy, 2 June 2015, accessible at Maria Kolomychenko, “
The issue of the “right to be forgotten” – so far limited to Europe – has also sparked off parliamentary debates. In June 2015 the State Duma passed in first reading a draft bill which forces search engines to delete links to any information that is over three years old, based on citizens’ requests and without court orders. A formal complaint addressed to the search engine and mentioning the topic of the information to be removed (not a hyperlink, as in European Union) is enough. In early July 2015 the draft passed in third reading in the State Duma, but it still needs to be approved by the Federation Council and then signed by the President to become law. Internet industry representatives in Russia have spoken out against the law, calling it unconstitutional and claiming it limited Russians’ right to access information. If search companies deny a request, the applicant could appeal in court. See Vladimir Todorov, “ Polina Rusyaeva, Svetlana Bocharova, Sergey Sobolev, “ Navalny’s blog can be found at:
In an international context marked by strenuous information campaigns over the events in Ukraine, added to what he perceives as the decline of a “morally decadent” West – which would use the internet to pervert Russian society and culture, Vladimir Putin has seriously come to consider the foreign policy of the internet as the establishment of a new U.S.-led hegemonic framework. Not surprisingly, the scandal involving the United States National Security Agency (NSA) sparked by Edward Snowden’s leakage of classified documents from June 2013 allowed Russian authorities to legitimise their own regulation and surveillance practices, and to push forward other legislations further tightening government control over the internet.
In April 2014 VladimirPutin publicly assimilated the internet to a “CIA project” and expressed reservations to Russian internet companies which are registered abroad “not only for taxation purposes” (such as the successful local search engine Yandex). Rumours about an internet “kill switch” being devised in Russia came after “cyber exercises” reportedly revealed vulnerabilities in RuNet’s security infrastructure preparedness against potential external aggression. Anastasia Golitsyna, “ Alexandra Kulikova, “Top 8 major trends on the Russian Internet in 2014”, Russia Direct, 24 December 2014.
The most controversial discussions and laws have been involving the private sector. The post-Snowden context proved timely for officials on the basis that the privacy policies adopted by transnational companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and others pose a threat to Russia’s digital sovereignty – and consequently national security. In the wake of Snowden’s intelligence disclosures, several members of both houses of the parliament suggested that all servers on which the Russian citizens’ personal data were stored should be located in Russia, and started a media campaign to bring global web platforms under Russian jurisdiction – either requiring them to be accessible in Russia by the domain extension .ru, or forcing them to be hosted on Russian territory. Sergey Zheleznyak, “My dolzhny obespechiy ‘tsifrovoj suverenitet’”, Ekonomika I Zhizn’, 19 June 2013. ‘
Parliamentary debates nevertheless continued for a year until the controversial Federal Law “ The text is accessible at On the increased powers of Roskomnadzor, see Andrey Tselikov, “The Tightening Web of Russian Internet Regulation”, Harvard Berkman Center on Internet & Society, Research Publication No.2014-2015, 20 November 2014.
The law indeed took force on 1 September 2015, although it introduced nuances in its scope, adding to the confusion surrounding the legislative process. Roskomnadzor made clear it will not verify the compliance of mainstream services with the personal data until 2016. Kseniya Boletskaya, Elizaveta Sergyna, “ Shaun Walker, “Russian data law fuels web surveillance fears”, The Guardian, 1 September 2015. Ibid.
Unquestionably, Russia is not the first country in the world to impose such data localisation requirements across all sectors of the economy: China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam have implemented similar laws and Brazil and Germany have sought to enact localisation policies. As Jonah Force Hill noted, the data localisation movement is a complex and multilayered phenomenon: depending on the country in which it is being advanced, localisation – supposedly defending privacy – also serves to protect domestic businesses from foreign competition, to support domestic intelligence and law enforcement ambitions, to suppress dissent and to stir up anti-American feelings for narrow political ends. Jonah Force Hill, “The Growth of Data Localization Post-Snowden: Analysis and Recommendations for U.S. Policymakers and Industry Leaders”, The Lawfare Institute, Lawfare Research Paper Series, Vol.2, No.3, July 2014.
It is not exaggerate to say Russia combines all these motivations – at the expense of its economic performance. Half of Russia's GDP comes from the services sector, which uses data extensively. See Ekonomika Runeta 2013-2014, op. cit. [8]. Author's phone interviews with Russian internet industry representatives, 5 and 25 June 2015. See Matthias Bauer, Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, Erik van der Marel, Bert Verschelde, “Data Localisation in Russia: A Self-imposed Sanction”, European Center for International Political Economy, Policy Brief, June 2015. The authors estimated that, compared to a scenario where the amendment is not passed, Russia will experience a loss of GDP of minus 0.27% this is an economic loss equivalent to 286 billion rubles (US$5.7 billion). Author’s phone interview with a Russian expert on internet surveillance, 10 September 2015. See e.g. Nicholas Watt and Patrick Wintour, “David Cameron seeks cooperation of US president over encryption crackdown”, The Guardian, 15 January 2015. In the case of France, the reader may refer to the debates around the controversial “Intelligence Bill” adopted in March 2015.
Though not specific to Russia, plans to promote national networking technology, set up a secure national email service and encourage regional internet traffic to be routed locally are well in the spirit of the times in Moscow. See e.g. Julien Nocetti, op. cit. [8], pp. 113-116; Anastasia Golitsyna, ‘
All these claims tend to legitimise and revive the longstanding call for a “national operating system” (OS) that would reduce the Russian dependency on Microsoft Windows. Back in 2011, then Minister of Communications Igor Schegolev approved what he called a prototype for “Russian Windows”, a national operating system that was designed to be used by government officials and civil servants. However, that project was called off in 2012 when Vladimir Putin appointed Nikolai Nikiforov as the head of the Ministry of Communications – with a seemingly less ambitious agenda.
In May 2015 the Russian authorities announced their plan to work alongside the Finnish smartphone company Jolla, which built the Sailfish OS, to develop an alternative mobile OS. Irina Yuzbekova, Yana Miliyukova, “ The Chinese have been actively working to build their own mobile operating system for several years. The first such OS, called OPhone, was developed back in 2009, only for work on the project to end in 2011. More recently, the Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has been working with Shanghai Liantong Network Communications Technology to build the China Operating System to compete with dominant foreign OS. Author's phone interview with a senior research analyst from Gartner, 27 May 2015. Anna Sokolova, “
It may also be a response to the American technological embargo upon Crimea: in January 2015, Barack Obama ordered sanction that targeted Crimea – banning American online services like Amazon, PayPal, and Apple's App Store from operating in the disputed peninsula. Russians promptly reacted by underlining the U.S. “double standard”: “ AmyWilson, “Computer Gap: The Soviet Union’s Missed Revolution and Its Implications for Russian Technology Policy”, Problems of Post-Communism, Vol.56, No.4, 2009, p.49.
More broadly, these debates also happen outside Russia – Europe is also increasingly worried with its digital sovereignty, that is, its perceived dependence upon U.S. technologies and services. See for instance the two reports issued by the French Senate: “ Data provided by Gazprombank, quoted in Ryan Vlastelica, “EU Google probe encourages investors in Russia competitor Yandex”, Reuters, 21 April 2015.
Several high-level officials echoed these above-mentioned concerns at the recent St.Petersburg International Economic Forum (June 2015): Alexandr Zharov, head of Roskomnadzor, claimed Russia needs its own national text messaging service “to reflect [Russian] national identity”. “ Ibid. Telegram, a new text messaging service created by Pavel Durov, co-founder of Russia's largest social network VKontakte, does offer a Russian interface and full support for Russian-language users. Telegram, which currently boasts 62 million users, was started by P.Durov in 2013, shortly before he left VKontakte ̶ and Russia ̶ citing his inability to work in a country “incompatible with internet business”.
If there is no direct evidence that the Russian authorities took their inspiration from foreign internet legislations, they do care about regulatory practices observed in other countries – be they authoritarian or democratic regimes. A report by the Civil Society Development Foundation, a Russian “think tank” with close ties to the Kremlin, The foundation was created and is still headed by Konstantin Kostin, former deputy head of the department of domestic politics at the presidential administration. Filtratsiya kontenta v Internete. Analiz mirovoj praktiki, Civil Society Development Foundation, May 2013, accessible at http://civilfund.ru/research/1 . Yelena Chernenko, “
In such a restrictive context, and in the light of the current information struggle over Ukraine, one may assume that the Russian official state-centric approach towards the internet is highly likely to prevail – if not to strengthen, with less freedom for civil society and independent businesses.
Pioneers of Russia's internet – mostly the technical community that introduced the internet in Russia in the 1990s and the not-for-profit structures “governing” the national segment, along with IT entrepreneurs and active users of the blogosphere – have clearly been overshadowed by a more security-oriented grouping of so-called “power ministries” (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Defense, Federal Service for Control of the Narcotics Trade, law enforcement agencies such as the Federal Security Service), and political figures from the ruling party United Russia and its affiliated youth organisations. State-controlled media Most of Russian TV channels are state-owned or state-funded, the only exception being TV Dozhd (TV Rain), which broadcasts via both satellite provider and online. Among radio stations, Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow) was once known for its political independence before the state gas monopoly Gazprom bought 66% of the broadcaster’s shares. The press has been suffering from continuous government pressure for the past decade. For an overview of media control in Russia, see Katherine Ognyanova, “Careful What You Say: Media Control in Putin's Russia - Implications for Online Content”, International Journal of e-Politics, 1:2, pp. 1-15, 2010. For a recent review of the controversies behind state-media ownership, see Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index, and Freedom House’s 2014 Freedom on the Net Report. Erik Nisbet, “Benchmarking Public Demand: Russia's Appetite for Internet Control”, Philadelphia: Internet Policy Observatory, February 2015.
The “Arab Spring” uprisings, the mass demonstrations in the winter 2011-2012 in Russia's biggest cities, then Snowden's disclosures are as many examples of a geostrategic landscape modeled by “information” which is dominated by a still hegemonic United States – as the Russian decision-makers see it. All the recent regulatory initiatives pushed by the government may well fit into a broader “information warfare” strategy directed against the West – the objective of securing the domestic “informational space” being not the least of the stakes. See for instance Jolanta Darczewska, “The Information War on Ukraine: New Challenges”, The Cicero Foundation, Cicero Foundation Great Debate Paper, No.14/08, December 2014. Martin Untersinger, “ Sputnik.ru was made the automatic preference in state companies and government departments. Anastasia Golytsina, Maksim Tovkajlo, “
The consequences of this increasing “self-isolation” in Russia’s internet are likely to prove more severe in the economic realm. Data regulation including data localisation measures may have a significant negative economic effect: Russia’s innovative capacities would likely be severely hampered, and data-driven industries, typically e-commerce, tourism, financial services, logistics and most forms of business services would also be affected in the first instance. Author's informal discussions with Russian internet entrepreneurs at the 7th Russian Internet Governance Forum, Moscow, 7 April 2015. See also Matthias Bauer, art. cit. [43].
What we are likely to see is a “hybrid” approach, combining more legislation with some later fine-tuning. Unquestionably, in the current difficult legislative context, complicated by Western sanctions against Russia and the new strategy of import substitution, it is going to be more challenging both for Russian companies to keep up with global business, and for the foreign players to stay in the Russian market. Author's interview with an expert of Russia's internet industry, Moscow, 26 November 2014.
Will then the RuNet wall-garden itself? Like many governments in a post-Snowden context, Russia is actively seeking to legislate and enforce sovereign internet laws that may well fragment digital information-sharing. Although it is tempting to emphasise the restrictive nature of these laws, we should put them into a wider context in which appears an objective convergence between states, be they authoritarian or not, towards a “digital wave” that might carry their sovereign prerogatives away. Here lies a relevant ground for further research: in a post-Snowden context, more than ever, we need to think beyond a binary vision of the internet as “a new space of freedom” or “a new instrument of control”.