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Putin Wants His Own Internet

A new law would create a single command post from which authorities can manage—and halt—information flows across Russian cyberspace.

Screens broadcast Vladimir Putin’s annual press conference in Moscow on Dec. 20, 2018.

Screens broadcast Vladimir Putin’s annual press conference in Moscow on Dec. 20, 2018.

Photographer: Vasily Maximov/AFP via Getty Images

When anti-government protests erupted on Russia’s side of the Caucasus Mountains in October, authorities did something they’d never done before: cut mobile internet service to an entire geographical area.

For almost two weeks, tens of thousands of mainly Muslim Russians were prevented from accessing social media sites and sharing videos through their smartphones. Unlike China, where control of the internet is uniquely centralized, Russia doesn’t yet have an easy way to quarantine negative news, so it had to force commercial carriers to curtail local services one by one.