Muscovites face second week without online access as Kremlin’s war on internet continues

A mass internet outage in Moscow entered its second week on Thursday, with residents of the Russian capital, including lawmakers in Russia’s State Duma, continuing to face difficulties connecting to wireless networks across the city.

Residents first experienced outages in the southern and central districts of Moscow on 5 March, but by Tuesday issues with mobile data and public Wi-Fi networks were being reported in at least 23 districts of the city, as well as by internet users in Russia’s second city St. Petersburg. Russian telecom operators have apologised for the outages, citing circumstances beyond their control.

At a briefing on Wednesday, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the outages would last "as long as additional measures are necessary to ensure the safety of our citizens." Blaming the need for the internet outages on hostile actions by Ukraine, Peskov claimed that Kyiv’s "increasingly sophisticated attack methods require more technologically advanced countermeasures."

Experts cited by Russian business daily Kommersant on Wednesday estimated that the total economic loss to Moscow’s businesses of the week-long outage could be as much as 5 billion rubles (€54.5 million), with small business owners particularly affected.

Sarkis Darbinyan, a lawyer and co-founder of the Russian anti-internet censorship NGO Roskomsvoboda, told Novaya Gazeta Europe that the outages were likely due to a "wild fear of a repeat of Operation Spiderweb", a meticulously planned remote-controlled drone strike on four Russian airbases launched from within the country by the Security Service of Ukraine in June.

Regional internet outages have been regularly reported across Russia since at least May, the objective of which — officially at least —was preventing potential Ukrainian drone strikes. A similar four-day internet blackout was imposed on Moscow in the run-up to the annual Victory Day parade in May, which Darbinyan said was technologically identical to the current outages.

The latest blackouts are part of a wider Kremlin crackdown on Russians enjoying uncensored access to online content, which has seen popular platforms such as Whatsapp and Telegram targeted by the authorities citing alleged security concerns.

In the Kremlin’s daily briefing on Thursday, Peskov said that the planned block of messenger app Telegram next month could be avoided if the platform acceded to demands that it "comply fully with Russian legislation."

Telegram has previously refused requests from the Russian authorities to hand over the platform’s encryption keys, which would grant authorities a "back door" to spy on private messages sent on the platform.