The cutoffs threaten to upend Russia’s thriving digital life. While the political system has clung to Mr. Putin’s cult of personality and television broadcasters and newspapers face tight restrictions, online culture has brimmed with activism, dark humor and foreign content. Broadly censoring the internet could return the country to a deeper form of isolation, akin to the Cold War era.
“I was born in the era of a super-free internet and now I’m seeing it collapsing,” said Ksenia Ermoshina, a researcher from Russia now working at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. She published a paper in April about the censorship technology.
The censorship infrastructure was described by 17 Russian telecom experts, activists, researchers and academics with knowledge of the work, many of whom declined to be named because they feared reprisal. Government documents, which were reviewed by The New York Times, also outlined some of the technical details and demands made to telecom and internet service providers.
Russia is using the censorship technology to gain more leverage over Western internet companies in addition to other strong-arm tactics and legal intimidation. In September, after the government threatened to arrest local employees for Google and Apple, the companies removed apps run by supporters of Mr. Navalny ahead of national elections.
Roskomnadzor, the country’s internet regulator overseeing the effort, can now go further. It has threatened to take down YouTube, Facebook and Instagram if they do not block certain content on their own. After authorities slowed down Twitter this year, the company agreed to remove dozens of posts deemed illegal by the government.