He has long referred to the internet as a “CIA project”. His deep belief that the enemy within and the enemy without are in effect one and the same means that if Alexei Navalny, Mr Putin’s foremost internal foe, uses YouTube—his video of the president’s seaside palace was viewed more than 120m times—then YouTube and its corporate parent, Google, are enemies, too.
Faced with such “aggression”, Mr Putin wants a Russian internet that is secure against external threat and internal opposition. He is trying to bring that about on a variety of fronts: through companies, the courts and technology itself.
Jointly with China, Russia has stalled UN talks aimed at defining responsible state behaviour in cyberspace, instead insisting on “information sovereignty”—code for doing what ever it pleases.
Read THE ECONOMIST's full analysis HERE.
