Russia-Ukraine: Is internet on verge of break-up?

The world, both physical and digital, is going through unprecedented times as conflict rages in Ukraine.

Corporate giants like Meta, Google and Apple, which have always presented themselves as neutral tech firms, are now showing their political colors to the pole – by banning products in Russia in response to the invasion.

Meanwhile, the internet is changing even for Russian users — Twitter and Facebook are being blocked, TikTok isn’t allowing Russian users to post, and police are reportedly stopping people on the street to see what they’re seeing on their phones.

The question now is whether the conflict could fundamentally change not only the geography of the world but also the nature of the global Internet.

The Ukrainian government has singled out individual tech firms to ask them to ban services in Russia, and the list of tech firms refusing to do business or sell products there is growing by the day.

Now Ukraine’s tech-savvy leaders are demanding something bigger — that Russia be completely disconnected from the global internet.

The calls were answered with a resounding “no” by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), which is responsible for internet governance. It has been asked to revoke Russia’s top-level domains, such as .ru, along with the country’s associated Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates.

But the slogan is “One World, One Internet” and in his response to Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov, ICANN Chief Executive Goran Marby said: “As part of our mission, we maintain neutrality and act in support of the global Internet. Our mission does not come down to taking punitive action, imposing sanctions, or restricting access to any segment of the Internet, regardless of the provocations.”

The digital privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was one of several organizations supporting the decision.

In a statement, EFF’s Corynne McSherry and Konstantinos Komaitis said war was not a time to “mess with the internet”. An intervention in basic protocols of the Internet infrastructure would have “dangerous and long-lasting consequences”.

This includes:

Cloudflare, a web infrastructure company that provides protection against cyberattacks, has also been ordered by Ukraine to shut down its services in Russia.

In a blog, the company said it reviewed these requests but concluded that “Russia needs more Internet access, not less.”

For many, the calls for the shutdown were a dangerously slippery slope to the so-called splinternet — where different countries have different versions of the internet.

The Great Firewall of China, as it is also known, is perhaps the most obvious example of a country creating its own web.

But also in Iran, network content is monitored and external information is restricted by Iran’s state telecommunications company.

Russia itself has been experimenting with a sovereign internet – dubbed Runet – for several years, albeit one retrofitted to the existing internet and not China’s built-from-scratch version.

In 2019, the Russian government said it had successfully tested the system. Few understood the need then, but now, in the context of the invasion of Ukraine, “everything makes a lot more sense,” said Prof Alan Woodward, a computer scientist at the University of Surrey.

In this test, Russian ISPs were asked to configure the Internet within their borders as if it were a giant intranet — a private network of websites that don’t communicate with the outside world.

The initiative was to limit the points at which Russia’s version of the grid connects to its global counterpart.

Now it appears that Russia is testing these systems again – a Russian government memo has urged ISPs to tighten their security and connect to DNS (Domain Name System) servers in Russia.

Some thought the memo and the March 11 test completion date meant Russia intended to lock itself down immediately.

Prof Woodward sees it more as another test of readiness: “This was more about Russia asking ISPs to prepare to make local copies of the DNS – the internet’s phone book – and to have local versions of third-party software that comes from servers outside of Russia, such as B. Javascript.”

Russia has since denied it will shut itself down, saying the test is about protecting Russian websites from foreign cyberattacks.

But James Griffiths, author of The Great Firewall of China, believes the plug could be pulled at any moment: “Shutting down the internet, making sure Russians only watch content that the Kremlin approves, that kind of thing makes strategic sense, so you can see the path we’re taking,” he told the BBC.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if that came into force in the coming weeks or months.”

Abishur Prakash, author of How Technology is remaking Globalization, believes the conflict is reshaping the internet from “a global system that the whole world is plugged into” to something more fragmented.

“Because of geopolitics, a different design is emerging for the internet, with nations either cut off or developing their own alternative. The global bridges, like social media platforms, that have connected populations for decades are being brought down.”

And according to James Griffiths, the new network power axis will be shared between the West and China/Russia.

“Liu Wei, known as the founding father of China’s Great Firewall, visited Russia in 2016 to help them in their work to make the Russian firewall much more like China’s,” he said

And now Russia will look to Beijing again as internet companies withdraw services and products, he says: “Since the Russian economy is cut off from much of the world economy, they are turning to China. They will have to rely on China even more than in the past.”

Tech companies like Huawei have not said anything official about the conflict so far.