Moscow goes offline | The Bell

Moscow goes offline

Valeria Pozychanyuk
Valeria Pozychanyuk

Hello! Over the last week Russia’s internet blackouts have reached a new extreme, this week we look at how Moscow is coping with being thrown back to the online dark ages, and why the authorities are cutting the connection right now.

Russian capital hit by week-long internet blackouts

The authorities’ clampdown on free internet in Russia has reached a new height, with the most serious outages yet seen in Moscow leaving large chunks of the city without any mobile internet whatsoever. Muscovites, long used to the comfort of a thriving digital economy, were left unable to order taxis or even make card payments in stores. Officials tried to claim that it was all just a minor inconvenience, and a small price to pay for “security.” They have not explained exactly what threat they are averting by turning off the internet.

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The Bell was founded in 2017 by journalists Elizaveta Osetinskaya, Irina Malkova and Peter Mironenko as a news outlet independent from the Russian authorities, after its founders have been sacked as top editors at the largest Russian news website RBC because of pressure from the Kremlin.

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