Russia started working on its own Great Firewall model which will limit the data transfer within the country and blocking the data incoming from or outgoing to international services when needed. This model will also enable routing internet traffic through government servers.
In May, President Putin approved the “internet sovereignty” law. To explain the reason of this law, the Kremlin government declared that Russia needs to have the ability to disconnect its cyberspace from the world, in case of a national emergency and/or a foreign threat like a cyberattack.
Russia is testing the disconnection from the internet
With this law, the Roskomnadzor, the country’s telecoms regulator, will gain the ability to manage all local ISPs route traffic through special servers. To realize this goal a wide intranet called Runet by the government is being built. The efforts to pass the internet traffic from these servers within Russia’s own internet space has been continuing for more than half a decade.
Russian internet service providers have already started cooperating with the Russian government for the preparation of the Russian unplugging the internet test. On the other hand, some internet infrastructure experts define this plan as impractical and idealistic. Also, the US thinks that Russia will leave this plan unfinished.
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