From Republic.ru, April 25, 2026, https://republicmag.io/posts/117419. Complete text:
Editors’ Note. – The construction of a “sovereign Internet” could undermine the stability of the state that engages in it, concludes political analyst Klim Bakulin (pseudonym), a regular contributor to Republic-Weekly. In his new column, he explains how online censorship not only limits freedoms, but also directly works against the regime and deprives it of critical information.
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Blocks on Telegram and rolling blackouts of mobile Internet are hardly unique to Russia. Since 2022, the country has been rapidly moving to join the global trend of restricting Internet freedoms. According to the Freedom on the Net 2025 report, there are approximately 5.5 billion Internet users worldwide. Of these, 81% live in countries that have at some point arrested their citizens for online statements on political or religious topics, and 61% access the Internet from jurisdictions that restrict access to certain social media platforms.
A distinctive feature of recent years is that the fight against a free Internet has ceased to be the exclusive prerogative of authoritarian regimes. Members of the German government are known to prosecute online trolls, Australia has banned citizens under 16 from using social media, and the UK is trying to force Apple to share access to encrypted user data. That is, the restriction of online freedom in Russia simultaneously expresses two trends. One is that, since the start of the war [in Ukraine], the country is becoming less and less free. From this perspective, the attack on the Internet is merely a reflection of the regime’s overall transformation in the online world. The other trend is that governments around the globe, both dictatorships and liberal democracies, are trying to extend their sovereignty to cyberspace.
Hundreds of years ago, the distant predecessors of these governments sent “civilizing missions” overseas, laying claim to dominion over the peoples of Africa, Asia or the Americas. Today, bureaucrats are busy colonizing the once pristine free Internet: Imaginary border markers are emerging even in digital reality.
There is some good news, however: The tightening of online censorship has its limits.
Political analysts have found numerous examples of how the blocking of independent media or entire social media networks has not resulted in people being deprived of access to truthful information or the ability to express their views, but has had the exact opposite effect.
Opinions about the regime deteriorated, users began consuming more opposition content, and the authorities themselves lost a valuable source of information about the mood of citizens. Granted, such a reaction to censorship is only possible under strictly defined circumstances. Time will tell whether Russia will become another textbook case of how not to restrict the Internet if you want to strengthen your power. In the meantime, let’s discuss how this has worked in other countries.
What is Internet censorship, and why do autocrats need it?
Political analyst Margaret Roberts proposes defining Internet censorship simply and succinctly – as a tax on information. Indeed, autocrats are not magicians and cannot destroy foreign social media networks or uncontrolled outlets with a snap of their fingers. Instead, they raise costs for their audience. According to Roberts, Internet censorship relies on three main mechanisms: fear, “additional friction” and “flooding.”
In the first case, the authorities discourage the audience from consuming information by threatening punishment. Declaring Meduza or Dozhd [TV Rain] undesirable organizations in Russia makes grounds for criminal prosecution out of likes and comments, not to mention financial support. There’s no need to track down every reader of opposition media – a few high-profile cases are enough, and the rest will start to behave much more cautiously. Reading opposition sites in a crowded subway car ceases to be routine and acquires a noticeable hint of anxiety. To be fair, Russia is still far from the worst examples of Internet censorship by fear. For example, in military-ruled Myanmar, security forces have been observed randomly checking the smartphones of passersby. If a VPN is found to have been installed, this means a fine or even jail.
But when it comes to censorship by “friction,” Russia is definitely one of the world leaders. The essence of this mechanism is that citizens must spend additional time or resources to gain access to information. Millions of Russians continue to use Instagram and YouTube. However, since the beginning of the war, these audiences have noticeably decreased. Knowing how proxies or VPNs work to access blocked resources is a privilege reserved for a younger, more educated, affluent and Internet-savvy audience.
Finally, “flooding” is filling the Internet with messages that either distract citizens from content undesirable to the autocrat or call such content’s credibility into question. In this, Russia is competing with China for the gold medal. It is known that even in 2014-2015, government-linked bots produced more than 50% of all posts in the political segment of Russian Twitter, and commentators hired by the Chinese government at about the same time left at least 448 million messages on social media networks per year.
Of course, the primary goal of these tricks is to replace the opposition agenda with a loyalist one. In a citizen’s life there should be as little [Yury] Dud and as much [Vladimir] Solovyov as possible. At the same time, scholars today believe that Internet censorship works in a more complex way. First, if users believe the government can monitor their online activity, they will resort to self-censorship, even if they have negative thoughts about the regime. For example, the introduction of mandatory account verification on Chinese social media has led to a decline in discussions of political topics, and online survey respondents in Kazakhstan became less willing to justify political protests when reminded of the government’s ability to spy on their online behavior.
Second, both self-censorship and the disproportionate presence of propaganda on social media convince citizens that their skepticism of the government is probably unpopular. They might not be averse to joining a protest or supporting an opposition party’s campaign with their money, but human social nature pushes them either to join the “majority” or at least to refrain from expressing disagreement with its views. Internet censorship allows the regime to construct those imaginary 99.9% of Russians who, according to Putin, are ready to “lay down everything in the interests of the Motherland.”
How and why Internet censorship backfires.
Restricting online freedoms does not always benefit those in power. Let’s recall last year’s revolution in Nepal: The spark that ignited the uprising was the government’s attempt to block almost all major social media platforms. In a less radical form, the same scenario was tried out by the residents of Uganda several years ago. There, “merely” the introduction of a tax on the use of Twitter, WhatsApp and Facebook was enough to trigger protests.
In Russia, a far less free and far richer country, the price of publicly expressing discontent is much higher.
People did not storm the Kremlin after YouTube was throttled [see Vol. 76, No. 33, pp. 12-13], in part because the regime has sufficient resources to suppress protests.
If new rounds of Internet censorship do irritate citizens, this irritation should manifest itself in a less obvious form. For example, research into the impact of online propaganda in China suggests that while it makes users more confident in the power of the state and less confident in the possibility of protest, it also leads to a deterioration in attitudes toward the government and an increased desire to emigrate. In other contexts, such as Syria and Egypt, Internet and social media blockages have led people to discuss politics offline more often. This, in turn, strengthened the social bonds that made mass protests possible.
Why does Internet censorship in some cases force people to demonstrate loyalty, while in others it only increases dissatisfaction with the authorities? Scholars offer two trivial but important answers to this question: Irritation arises when people perceive that authorities are restricting access to information for their own political gain, and also when they desire to continue using a free Internet.
The general level of knowledge about the structure of the digital world is quite low. For example, in China, about 48% of Internet users are unaware of the existence of the Great Firewall, a comprehensive government-run system for filtering online content. The situation is further complicated by the fact that dictators are reluctant to admit to deliberately censoring the Internet. Of course, Russian authorities justify their social media blocking by a desire not to control citizens’ information consumption, but to fight attacks by Ukrainian drones, fraud or the machinations of Western intelligence agencies. For the sake of safety, it is worth being patient. However, so far there is no indication that Russians accept such explanations at face value.
The desire to have free access to censored information is also not an innate quality. For evidence, let’s turn to another study on freedom of speech in China. Researchers provided a group of students with free software to bypass censorship restrictions. Despite having such an opportunity, they were in no hurry to try it out. The situation only changed when the researchers began rewarding subjects for reading blocked information. Moreover, many subjects continued to pay for censorship circumvention tools themselves even after the experiment ended. That is, in an authoritarian context, people may simply be unaware of what censors are depriving them of. When such knowledge appears, interest in the restricted content also arises.
We shouldn’t delude ourselves with the idea that people are unhappy with Internet censorship because they want to exercise their civil liberties or learn the truth about government actions. The primary motivation is usually the loss of access to entertainment content. This is not surprising: From the point of view of political analysts, apoliticality is rather a normal state of the average citizen. However, even the urge to watch TikToks or communicate with relatives on a banned messenger can undermine the regime’s stability. According to the “gateway theory,” circumventing censorship to view funny pictures ultimately leads to improved access to politicized information. Let’s say you weren’t very interested in [political scientist] Yekaterina Shulman’s talk shows on YouTube before. However, you cannot imagine your life without Telegram. The messenger ban forces you to install a VPN, making your chances of ever hearing from Yekaterina Mikhailovna [Shulman] greater than zero.
Shooting oneself in the foot.
Perhaps the main threat to authoritarian stability is the lack of objective information about the real state of affairs in the country and the world. Protests or coups are merely a consequence of these miscalculations. For example, the “genius of the Carpathians” [former Romanian leader] Nicolae Ceausescu clearly overestimated the extent of the people’s love for him; [expatriated Venezuelan President] Nicolás Maduro dismissed [US President] Donald Trump’s threats as a bluff; and [former Kazakh president] Nursultan Nazarbayev placed too much trust in his successor, [President] Kasym-Zhomart Tokayev.
Scholars call this problem the “dictator’s dilemma.”
Authoritarian leaders typically have no sympathy for independent media or opposition parties, but completely destroying them leads to the government and the population existing in two parallel realities. Rank-and-file officials have no incentive to voluntarily report their mistakes to their superiors, and the public is deprived of the tools with which to put unruly bureaucrats in their place. As a result, the quality of governance and the economy nosedive, and the leaders sitting in the capital remain oblivious to the problems until an angry mob storms their palace.
For this reason, sensible dictators usually leave the population with limited opportunities to criticize the regime: They can complain about corruption in the lower echelons of power and even organize economic protests. This keeps officials in check and allows them to soberly assess the mood of citizens. Limited freedom of speech makes it easier to identify and repress overly vocal critics and helps to understand where to direct finite state resources.
A relatively free Internet and social media are an ideal substitute for independent media and competitive politics. However, this will only work under one condition: People must trust the platform they use to express their opinions about the government. VKontakte or MAX are unlikely to be suitable for this role. As the Telegram channel Faridaily reported, even Russian officials themselves are buying new phones to install the “sovereign” messenger [MAX], fearing surveillance and reprisals. VKontakte, in turn, holds the record for the number of criminal cases brought against posts, comments or likes. By complicating access to social media, where Russians feel relatively comfortable, the authorities are losing access to an important source of data on their mood.
The future of Internet censorship in Russia.
If the experience of other countries is to be believed, strengthening Internet censorship in Russia should be seen as undermining the stability of the authoritarian regime. Citizens are well aware that the authorities are restricting their access to information. In March 2026, 77% of Russians reported problems with Internet access, with 69% of respondents stating that this had complicated their lives to some extent. A slight majority of the population (55%) does not support Roskomnadzor’s fight against Telegram and WhatsApp. If the explanations about terrorists and scammers worked, the picture would be completely different.
Moreover, there is also a noticeable desire to bypass blocks in order to maintain access to social networks. Since March 2024, the share of Russians using VPNs has increased from 25% to 36%. About the same number, 38%, know about the existence of such an opportunity. Again, this does not mean that all newly converted VPN users have become die-hard oppositionists. However, the likelihood of them coming into contact with information that the Russian regime would prefer to hide has increased exponentially.
And the most important thing is this: The Kremlin has spent years fine-tuning a complex infrastructure for interacting with the public on social media. Messengers and social media were used to mobilize loyal voters during elections and monitor citizen complaints. Now, at a minimum, it must be rebuilt; at a maximum, it risks being written off as scrap.
The heap of problems caused by the latest tightening of the screws does not mean that the fall of the regime is only a matter of days, months or years away. Nevertheless, when political scientists or historians analyze the decay of the Putin system, their analysis will surely include a paragraph about Internet censorship, which has only increased the underlying irritation with the government and made officials even more disconnected from the lives of ordinary Russians.