By Olha Chepil | 2023-12-29

KYIV -- Harsh restrictions are coming to the Russian internet soon.

The Kremlin plans to block all virtual private networks (VPNs) in the country starting March 1, Artem Sheikin, a senator from the Russian ruling party, said in October.

Sheikin cited the "extremist" nature of Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, as the reason for restricting the Russian internet.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has blacklisted dozens of websites that allegedly endanger state security, including Meta.

But with a VPN, the public has been able to visit blocked sites and express opinions in some way. Russia is among the world's top three countries in terms of the number of downloads of applications for bypassing blocking.

"The Russians are considering the possibility of isolating the internet altogether," Taras Zagorodny, a Ukrainian political scientist and managing partner of the National Anti-Crisis Group, told Kontur.

"Even disconnecting Russia from the global internet [could happen]. This is to block foreign services such as Facebook, X and YouTube. They are currently considering this option," Zagorodny said.

During the next two years Russia may follow the path of China, where public and commercial VPNs are blocked, and permit only VPNs designed for the Russian market, according to Zagorodny.

"In Russia, the FSB [Federal Security Service] has a separate unit that monitors social networks and all statements," he said.

"[President Vladimir] Putin's system of propaganda and repression works well enough that people are afraid to say or write something."

Prosecutions grow

Russians who object to their country's invasion of Ukraine have been paying a high price for their courage.

The number of defendants prosecuted by the Russian authorities for various expressions of antiwar sentiment on social networks is growing.

"We know of 322 people who became involved in politically motivated criminal cases in 2023 because of freedom of speech -- that is, publications, posts or other public statements made online," said Daria Korolenko, a lawyer and analyst with OVD-Info, an independent Russian human rights organization that fights political persecution in Russia. She is temporarily living abroad.

Sometimes, Russian prosecutors initiate such cases against Ukrainians.

For example, in November they opened a criminal case in absentia against Jamala, a Ukrainian singer of Crimean Tatar origin, in connection with charges of spreading false information about the Russian army.

But usually the defendants are ordinary Russians expressing their views on social networks.

"There are quite a few such cases -- the laws on extremism allow quite broad interpretation of actions, and this legislation's purview is going to expand even more soon," Korolenko told Kontur.

The sentences for posts have also become harsher. The majority of such court rulings did not involve imprisonment in 2022, but half of these defendants in 2023 are going to prison, according to Korolenko.

A court in October, for example, sentenced 45-year-old Dmitry Aritkulov to five and a half years in prison for Telegram comments that included the call "Death to the occupiers, freedom to the peoples! Greetings from Chukotka!"

Meanwhile, in Yekaterinburg, lawyer and human rights activist Alexei Sokolov was held for five days in October simply for displaying the Facebook logo on the Human Rights Defenders of the Urals website.

In one extreme case, Igor Baryshnikov, a cancer-stricken Kaliningrad resident, in June received a seven-and-a-half-year sentence after being convicted of spreading false information about the Russian army.

"This is such a wild, demonstrative example of the treatment of those involved in antiwar cases. This man could die any minute, but the Russian judicial system is not interested in that," said Korolenko.

The 64-year-old Baryshnikov was arrested for Facebook posts on topics including the Russian shelling of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol and Russian war crimes committed in Bucha, Ukraine.

Imprisonment may be fatal for Baryshniknov, who has an abdominal catheter that needs to be replaced periodically. In his final remarks at an appeal hearing, Baryshnikov said that he was not receiving any medical care.

'They want to lock me up'

Those who refuse to stop speaking up live in a climate of fear.

"The police have already come to me three times, but so far I have gotten away with it," said Diana Yefimchenko, a lawyer and resident of Taganrog, Russia, who runs a page about her city on Facebook, even though the social network is banned in Russia.

Yefimchenko also writes about the war in Ukraine and about Russian aggression on the page.

"I don't know what will happen next. If I don't come online, it means I'm locked up," Yefimchenko told Kontur.

Yefimchenko said she is outraged that more and more graves of those who participated in the so-called special military operation are appearing in the city, while children and mothers remain silent.

"We have the city of Taganrog ... a population of 250,000. And there is a huge promenade of graves of guys who [were] fighting for who knows what."

"Where are their mothers and children? Nothing, complete silence," said Yefimchenko.

Yefimchenko, the mother of three children, worries that her two sons, 30 and 16 years old, will be drafted.

Because of her statements online, she faces up to 10 years in prison.

"They want to give me a prison term. In our country, they immediately hit you with seven years for such posts, and they classify everything appearing online now as discrediting the armed forces."

"What discrediting? Pinch me. I want to wake up. I don't believe this is happening," said Yefimchenko.