Since February 24, Vladimir Putin has significantly extended his control of the Russian Internet. The head of the Kremlin first brought several independent media and their information channels to heel, before tackling the giants that are FacebookTwitter or even Instagram, so that they cease the dissemination of content contrary to his propaganda on the invasion of Ukraine. But is this thick digital iron curtain, whose construction dates back well before the start of the conflict, really so airtight? In truth, there are loopholes allowing us to see what is happening on the other side, where the invasion of Ukraine is highly criticized and where the images of the bombardments on civilian buildings outrage the entire planet.
First, through so-called VPNs. These “virtual private networks” allow access to sites or applications through servers located outside Russian cyberspace and its blockages. Top10VPN.com reported immediately after the Instagram blocking announcement that demand for VPN services had increased by 2692% in the country. For its part, the Atlas VPN provider also reported, on March 14, an increase in VPN downloads of 11,253% compared to the average.
Mobile data and statistics from the SensorTower platform also reveal a certain enthusiasm for VPNs in Russia. Both on the AppStore (Apple) and the PlayStore (Google), VPNs are the most downloaded applications on smartphones in the country. The Kremlin is aware of this. According to Forbesbased on information from Surfshark, the Russian telecommunications regulator (Roskomnadzor) forced Google to remove more than 36,000 addresses linked to VPN services in March.
VPNs dominate app store rankings in Russia.
SensorTower
Another possibility of accessing uncensored information in Russia: from the famous TOR network, and its addresses in onion which make up part of what is known as the dark web. Even if it has been officially blocked in the country since the beginning of December – before the invasion therefore – the teams of the “TOR project” have developed a tutorial to circumvent this blockage, seen by 137,000 people. Prior to this block, TOR claimed around 300,000 users in Russia. Last week, Twitter announced the launch of a version of its site on this network. Joining Western media like the New York Times, the BBC or Deutsche Welle already present for a few years.
Without risking falling into illegality, simply consulting Telegram messaging or the online encyclopedia Wikipedia can easily provide the latest developments in the war in Ukraine. Wikipedia, which was already blocked seven years ago, would currently (and logically …) be on borrowed time. The Kiwix organization, which publishes free software allowing offline content to be consulted, has reported an explosion in the downloading of its file comprising all the Russian-speaking pages, ie 1.8 million articles. This one would have already been downloaded more than 100,000 times, indicate its teams to Slateup 4,000% from January.
- Mirror sites, messages and calls from abroad…
Several breaches also come from the West. Reporters Without Borders (RSF), via the “Collateral Freedom” operation, in place in 18 countries, has set up a series of “mirror sites”, such as that of the independent media Meduza, banned from the Russian Internet on March 4 . The technique consists of “duplicate the censored sites and host copies on international servers belonging to web ‘giants’. If a country tries to censor these sites, it must also cut off access to all the sites and services hosted by this giant server, which would cause significant collateral damage to its economy”, details RSF on its website.
Another method: the hacker collective Squad303 has developed a website allowing to send a message to a Russian number, or a Russian email, in order to inform him about the situation in Ukraine. However, the data remains limited to a multitude of existing databases on the web. Squad303 still claims more than 30 million messages sent. A figure to be taken with tweezers. Who knows where, to whom, and how many people they really lead to? A similar initiative, “CallRussia.org“, said to have enabled 92,000 phone calls from the West to Russia since the start of the war.
Finally, many Ukrainian tech companies have been called upon since the start of the Russian invasion to transmit information across the border. This is particularly the case of the Reface application, which has completely redesigned its entertainment application in a spirit of “cyber-resistance”, by sending “push messages” on the evolution of the conflict to its two million Russian users. .
- Who really gets hold of these tools?
It is difficult to say whether these VPNs, and these redeployments on the TOR network, which allow the free flow of information, will have an impact on the regime of Vladimir Putin and the continuation of the conflict in Ukraine. For Asma Mhalla, lecturer at Sciences Po Paris, specialist in digital disinformation issues, this circumvention of the Russian digital iron curtain is mainly aimed at “young urban and city dwellers”, connected to the world. And not to the rest of civil society, of which “the elderly, provincial people, fed with information from the conventional media, validated by the Kremlin”, belong. However, “it is the latter who mainly constitute the electorate of Vladimir Putin”, she reminds L’Express.
Finally, the laws in force restrict the possibilities for the population to transform this information into a real dispute. Russia recently adopted heavy penalties for “lies” about its army, and more broadly about its action abroad. This Tuesday, March 22, a new law against the publication of “false information” has come to complete the legislative arsenal in force. Thus, the “public dissemination of knowingly false information under the guise of reliable information” about the “activities of Russian state bodies outside Russian territory”, can be punished by three to five years in prison. “Even if you have access to free information, in the end, the risk of being imprisoned, or even of being tortured, probably demotivates any attempt to disseminate it in the public sphere”, believes Asma Mhalla.
Nevertheless, in the long term, this censorship operated by Vladimir Putin could turn against him. In an article published three years ago in I’American Political Science Review, two British researchers recalled how – in a Chinese Internet largely censored by the Great Firewall – the subsequent addition of an Instagram blocking had generated a “gateway effect” among some citizens. “Regular Instagram users then sought software to evade the Great Firewall in order to continue accessing Instagram. This, in turn, gave them easy access to long-blocked websites such as Facebook and Twitter and political information on Wikipedia, which they subscribed to and viewed shortly after acquiring evasion software,” the authors note. Once the tools to counter censorship have been acquired, it is indeed difficult to part with them, even, as Vladimir Putin is currently doing, by strengthening his grip a little more. “Censoring more news sources further increases the total benefits of the breakout. Breakout technology will provide access to a wider range of banned media with each censorship event.”