Cyberspace no refuge for Putin’s foes as Kremlin strengthens ‘Runet’

Muscovites, like people in every European capital, now manage much of their lives through their phones, using a data network that is as quick and cheap as the taxis and takeaways they order on apps made by Yandex, Russia’s biggest tech firm.

The internet has also been where Russians could find eye-popping investigations into alleged corruption in President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle – published by campaigner Alexei Navalny’s anti-graft organisation and independent media outlets – while state-dominated television and most big newspapers toed the Kremlin line.

Cyberspace is no longer a refuge for Putin's critics, however, after a parliamentary election campaign that began with Navalny being jailed and his network banned, and ended with Apple and Google bowing to Russia pressure to block his app and opposition candidates calling protests over allegedly rigged online voting.

"Cancel them, cancel them," protesters chanted on Thursday night close to Moscow State University (MGU), after politicians from several parties joined forces to demand the annulment of electronic voting results.

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"Friends, the number of arguments showing that the election results were falsified is simply becoming critical," said Mikhail Lobanov, an MGU maths professor who seemed set to win his district easily until an avalanche of online votes handed victory to his pro-Kremlin rival.

Control

“The fact is, that if together we don’t gain control over the mechanism of electronic voting now, it will be used against us at all future elections. That’s why any activity – reposts, signing petitions, and of course joining gatherings in the streets. . . is extremely important. Let’s fight on,” he added.

Several MGU students were among a crowd of about 100 people who listened to Lobanov and others speak.

One of them, who declined to give her name, said she had been a volunteer monitor in the neighbouring district of Moscow, where, she was sure, the ruling United Russia party’s candidate had been handed victory by fraudulent e-voting results.

“I know because I saw the tallies of paper votes, and the online results bore absolutely no similarity to those. The electronic voting was clearly falsified.”

Lobanov and at least one other opposition candidate in Moscow said they received visits from the police before the protest, and reported that people who attended another post-election rally in the capital this week had been detained.

Valery Rashkin, the Communist Party's chief in Moscow, said the authorities seemed to have used facial-recognition technology to identify those who joined the protest, and were threatening to block the party's website for announcing plans to hold nationwide demonstrations against the election results on Saturday.

Moscow insists that its vast network of facial-recognition cameras makes the city safer and will soon make it more convenient, with all of its 241 metro stations now connected to a “FacePay” system that will be fully operational next month for people who upload the required biometric and bank data.

It is part of a broad trend, even an unspoken deal, which many Muscovites can live with – their city steadily becomes more modern and attractive, while real political choice and space for dissent continue to shrink.

‘Managed democracy’

But others see the Kremlin’s tightening control on technology as a sign that the “managed democracy” shaped by Putin’s 21 years in power is moving towards authoritarianism.

"The Kremlin doesn't want a Russian version of China's 'Great Firewall', or to seal off the Runet entirely from the outside world," Russian security expert Andrei Soldatov wrote in the Washington Post this week.

"Instead, Vladimir Putin wants his subjects to rely on Russian-made services and applications, to communicate via Russian social media platforms, to watch videos on Russian-made platforms and to search for information using Russian-provided services. That way, he hopes, they will be dependent on the version of reality the Russian authorities are keen to promote," he explained.

“The Soviet experience of technological autarky was a disaster. Could the Kremlin figure out a way to make it work this time? Putin seems to think so.”

Soldatov says the rise of Russian alternatives to US tech giants fuels Kremlin confidence that it could survive a rift with the West in cyberspace, which Putin and his security services view as a realm ultimately controlled by Washington.

Russia’s 144-million population also makes it an important market for even the biggest tech firms, and the country flexed its muscles on the eve of the election by “persuading” Apple and Google to block an app created by Navalny’s team to co-ordinate the protest vote against United Russia.

Big Tech

“If something surprised me in the latest elections, it was not how Putin forged the results, but how obediently the almighty Big Tech turned into his accomplices,” Navalny said from jail in a message posted by his allies on social media.

“This means that it recognises the right of an authoritarian thief to subjugate the internet, turning it into an instrument for seizure of power. . . They tell us about ‘making the world a better place’, but on the inside they are liars and hypocrites.”

The Kremlin insists there was nothing untoward about last weekend’s vote – which handed another two-thirds supermajority in the lower house of parliament to United Russia – and said “successful and convenient” e-voting should be expanded from Moscow and six other regions to cover the whole country “as soon as possible”.

"I think the system of electronic voting is in demand today," Nikolai Bulayev, deputy head of Russia's central election commission, said on Friday, as the authorities rejected all opposition complaints and confirmed that the results were valid.

“Nothing like this has been used on this scale anywhere else in the world,” he added. “And we are sure that the numbers. . . in the final count reflect the will of the voters, not the will of officials.”

Daniel McLaughlin’s reports from Russia continue next week with a visit to the Moscow Gulag Museum