The Internet now contributes to Russia's economy almost as much as Rosneft generates in tax revenue

In 2018, the Internet contributed 3.9 trillion rubles ($61.1 billion) to the Russian economy — an 11-percent jump from just a year earlier, according to statistics released by the Russian Association of Electronic Communications. E-commerce generated a large chunk of this income — about 1.95 trillion rubles ($30.5 billion). Marketing and advertising brought in another 263 billion rubles ($4.1 billion); Internet infrastructure, including domain, hosting, and cloud services, earned 106 billion rubles ($1.7 billion); and media and entertainment generated 75 billion rubles ($1.2 billion).

According to the website The Bell, the Internet's contribution to Russia's economy now almost matches the tax revenues generated by the state oil company Rosneft, which paid 4 trillion rubles ($62.6 billion) to the federal government last year, becoming the country’s biggest single taxpayer.

• On April 16, Russia’s State Duma adopted the final draft of “Internet isolation” legislation. The Federation Council will review the law on April 22.