War in Ukraine: Russia soon disconnected from the internet?

There’s the kinetic war with the violence of images and sounds, there is the quieter one of digital. If the cyberattack front is less and less talked about, it remains supported. The digital weapon in Ukraine is also about maintaining a connection Internet active for populations, armies and institutions thanks to the deployment of a network of satellites star link by Elon Musk. There is also the information war with the shutdown in Russia of Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and many other digital companies and in particular netflix.

More than services, it is on the Internet infrastructure side that positions have been changing very rapidly over the past few days. According to documents collected and disseminated by the Belarusian media Nexta, Russia is in the process of disconnecting its network from the global internet. And it is not in the realm of the impossible, since Futura had already explained last August that from June 15 to July 15, 2021 Russia had carried out an exercise to disconnect from the internet from what it calls its Runet. And when we know what the exercises can become, there is reason to worry… This Russian intention is not a novelty. As early as 2019, Russia decided to have the ability to isolate its own telecommunications network from the global internet for national security reasons. This is the opportunity to come to it and according to Nexta, the fateful date could be after March 11. Prior to this deadline, all servers and domains must migrate to the Russian network. It is for this reason that for several weeks a lot of traffic at the level of DNS was identified. Everything must be reallocated on DNS servers Russians as well as domain names in “.ru”. After this repatriation of resources to Russia, it is the Russian telecom policeman Roskomnadzor who will be responsible for monitoring the data passing through the network and managing the exchange points.

A break to better censor?

Concretely, this does not mean that Russia will no longer have access to the global Internet, it will have control of its network to contain cyberattacks and facilitate the monitoring of content. It remains capable of blocking certain traffic or even all of it. However, just as international sanctions isolated Russia, this internet shutdown may ultimately come from the West. So, according to Reuters, the American Cogent Communication, which is the second provider of Internet infrastructure in Russia, is already in the process of cutting Internet services to its Russian customers. For his part, Cogent told Reuters that this decision helps to counter the cyberattacks or the disinformation from Russia. A difficult decision, since breaking the connection means leaving the Russian populations under the sole influence of information authorized by the Kremlin. Obviously, as always since the beginning of the tensions, then the invasion, for its part, Russia has officially stressed that it is not planned to disconnect Runet from the global internet.

Runet: Russia disconnects its network from the internet

Russia announced that it had conducted a series of tests to disconnect its telecommunications network from the global Internet for a month, until July 15. Tests which show the Kremlin’s desire to set up a truly sovereign internet and which are not without raising some concerns.

Article by Sylvain Biget published on 08/01/2021

Nobody would have noticed in Russia but the country would have cut its connections toglobal internet during tests that would have taken place between June 15 and July 15. This is explained, with few details, by the economic daily RBC Daily in an article dated July 21. Tests that have therefore strangely gone unnoticed, both for Russian Internet users and for the rest of the global network. However, they would have involved all the operators in the country. Even if it is difficult to believe in a total disconnection from the network for a long period, the Kremlin therefore had to test the ability of Runet – this is the name of the Russian telecommunications network – to disconnect from the Internet. worldwide, without actually doing so. On the other hand, with the success of these “tests”, the Kremlin seeks to demonstrate that the country is capable of isolating its own telecommunications network from the global Internet to meet its objective set by its “Internet Sovereignty” law. . Passed in March 2019 by parliament, this law gives the government the power to disconnect Runet from the global network for security reasons. national security.

Runet: the border of language

The official argument would be to protect the country against cyberattacksfrom cyber espionage and foreign influences, especially American. But, for the opponents of the regime, this cut off from the global Internet would also result in a reinforced control of Russian Internet users.

This is not the first time that Russia has claimed to have disconnected its network from the global Internet. The country has already carried out a first disconnection test in 2019. Another experiment was canceled last year due to the pandemic of coronavirus. Cut or not of the global Internet, the real border between Runet and that of the global Internet is already, in fact, that of the language, if only with the use of Cyrillic characters. It is for this reason that many Russian speakers use their own tools such as the search engine yandexwhere the social network VKontakte, instead of American platforms.