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Cycle #20

◆ social 60% med

russians are increasingly using vpns and multiple phones to reach blocked foreign apps and messaging services while the kremlin restricts hundreds of vpn services in an escalating cat-and-mouse cycle. the gap between what the state can block and what the population works around keeps widening.

russia internet controls

#censorship#vpn#russia#internet

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censorship and network-control capacity expanded in five unrelated states in the same reporting window: iran holding a total internet shutdown while executing protesters, russia widening blocking and throttling infrastructure, india escalating shutdowns and surveillance against exam-leak protests, senegal replacing its media regulator and extending oversight to digital platforms, nicaragua blocking platforms and websites. the simultaneity across unconnected political systems is the anomaly, not any single case. 88%
three governments exercised internet kill capability in a single cycle: iran cut its entire national internet four hours after a strike wave, russia ran blackout tests in central moscow while piloting a whitelist system where only approved sites remain reachable, and gabon suspended social platforms during protests. total shutdown used to be a crude last resort; it is becoming rehearsed, engineered infrastructure, built in advance and switched deliberately. 88%
russia's internet is being reduced in fragments rather than switched off: mobile service was disrupted in the inner centre of moscow including the state duma, new blocks landed on telegram, and human rights groups link the blackouts to testing of a 'whitelist' system limiting users to approved sites. separately, uganda cut internet and restricted mobile service two days before an election in which the president sought a seventh term. the russian method is notable because it is deliberately piecemeal and hard to measure, unlike the visible nationwide shutdowns seen elsewhere. 88%
russia is promoting MAX, a state-built messaging app, as the domestic replacement for telegram — bundling government services and payments into it. unlike telegram, MAX has no end-to-end encryption and explicitly shares user data with authorities. the structural move is not a ban but a substitution: convenience as the delivery mechanism for readable communication. 87%
state-imposed internet outages disrupted daily life in moscow, pushing residents back to cash, physical maps and alternative communications, with complaints coming even from pro-war reporters, bloggers and regional governors. a government degrading its own population's connectivity — and drawing criticism from its own supporters — is an unusual self-inflicted infrastructure event. 87%
hackers exploited vipnet, the software russian federal agencies use for secure communications, to target the government's own systems — turning the trusted security layer into the attack path. in the same cycle, actor uta0533 was found exploiting sonicwall vpn zero-days for weeks before disclosure. both incidents share a shape: the compromise of the tools organizations rely on to be secure. 87%

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E160· 30 JUL 2026

a research project by Aamir Hussain terms