Schaeffer said the decision didn't reflect "financial considerations,” although he acknowledged that the ruble's sharp drop, which makes imported goods and services more expensive in Russia, could make it difficult to collect customer payments. Direct connections to servers inside Russia, he said, could potentially "be used for offensive cyber efforts by the Russian government.” “We have no desire to cut off Russian individuals and think that an open internet is critical to the world,” Cogent CEO Dave Schaeffer said in an interview. backbone provider, Lumen, has done the same. U.S.-based Cogent, which provides a major “backbone” for internet traffic, has cut direct connections inside Russia but left open the pipes through subsidiaries of Russian network providers at exchanges physically outside the country. Microsoft, by contrast, hasn’t said whether it will halt its cloud services in the country, although it has suspended all new sales of products and services. Both Cloudflare, which helps shield websites from denial-of-service attacks and malware, and Akamai, which boosts site performance by putting internet content closer to its audience, also continue to serve their Russian customers, with exceptions including cutting off state-owned companies and firms under sanctions.
Finale software breaks internet free#
On the other, they're wary of helping stifle a free flow of information that can counter Kremlin disinformation - for instance, the state's claim that Russia’s military is heroically “liberating” Ukraine from fascists.Īmazon Web Services, a major provider of cloud computing services, continues to operate in Russia, although it says it’s not taking on any new customers. On one side, they face public pressure to punish the Russian state and economic reasons to limit services at a time when bills might well go unpaid. That puts providers of internet bandwidth and associated services sympathetic to Ukraine’s plight in a tough spot. The same goes for Putin’s attempts to restrict the use of other censorship-evading software.
Any Russian with a modicum of tech smarts can circumvent Kremlin efforts to starve Russians of fact.įor instance, the government has so far had only limited success blocking the use of software known as virtual private networks, or VPNs, that allows users to evade content restrictions. Yet the Kremlin's latest censorship efforts have revealed serious shortcomings in the government's bigger plans to straightjacket the internet. By early Monday, the network monitor NetBlocks found network data showing the social network restricted in Russia across multiple users. On Friday, the Kremlin said it would also restrict access to Instagram.
Putin has also blocked access to both Western media and independent news sites in the country, and a new law criminalizes spreading information that contradicts the government's line. “You cannot just, like, kill our access.”įacebook didn’t, although the Kremlin soon picked up that baton, throttling both Facebook and Twitter so badly they are effectively unreachable on the Russian internet. wrote on Facebook in the war's first week. is Facebook,” Soldatov, now exiled in London. “Look, guys the only space the Russians have to talk about Ukraine.
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