Reporters Without Borders: Is Everything Under Control in Russia?

The organization Reporters Without Borders has updated its report on the state of the media in Russia. The report, titled “Everything Under Control? Censorship and Internet Oversight in Russia,” covers the period between the 2019 and 2021 elections and describes how the Kremlin has significantly restricted press freedom and freedom of speech in the country during this time.

Over the past two years, censorship, pressure on social networks, crackdowns on encryption, and persecution of journalists, IT specialists, and entrepreneurs have intensified in Russia. Social media platforms have received multi-million dollar fines for various reasons (with VKontakte fined much less than Twitter), encrypted email services and Telegram have faced blocks (ironically, the latter is also used by officials), Twitter was throttled, and NGINX was raided by police. In just the last five months, at least five opposition-leaning media outlets have been shut down.

All of this is regularly covered by Roskomsvoboda. Now, read the key findings from Reporters Without Borders. Below are the main takeaways; the full document is available via the provided link.

Pressure on the Media

Under the pretext of the coronavirus pandemic, the Russian parliament quickly passed a series of new laws. Now, authorities can:

• Label any journalist or outlet as a “foreign agent,” significantly complicating their work;
• Use “fake news” laws to block any material contradicting the official narrative, such as reports on the real situation in hospitals or information about protests supporting opposition leader Alexei Navalny;
• Accuse individuals of defamation for general statements (e.g., “the police are corrupt”).

According to the human rights organization Agora, which systematically tracks cases of online speech restrictions, law enforcement agencies initiated a total of 200 administrative and criminal cases in the first three months of the pandemic against people accused of spreading allegedly false information about Covid-19.

“Fake news laws can become a universal tool for pressuring organizations and media that criticize or question the authorities’ actions in dangerous situations. Their vague wording allows them to be used as a means of censorship, regardless of whether a state of emergency is declared. For example, information about shortages of medical masks or suspicions of underreporting infection rates can now be taboo for online media,” comments Roskomsvoboda spokesperson Natalia Malysheva.

However, the main weapon against independent media has been the so-called “foreign agent” laws, according to the report. Since December 2020, the number of media outlets and individual journalists listed as “foreign agents” by the Ministry of Justice has nearly quadrupled—from 11 to 43 (as of August 25, 2021). Half of them were designated as “foreign agents” just before the State Duma elections: first the portal Meduza, then the business portal VTimes. In July, the investigative outlet The Insider was added, and in August, two more—investigative portal “Important Stories” and opposition TV channel “Dozhd.” Alongside editorial teams, 25 individuals—mainly journalists, but also human rights defenders and activists—were included in the list.

In just a few months of 2021, at least five critical outlets ceased to exist: the news aggregator Newsru.com, business magazine VTimes, investigative portal “Proekt” (declared an “undesirable organization”), and Khodorkovsky-linked “Open Media” and “MBK Media,” both blocked by Roskomnadzor.

Pressure on Online Platforms

Amid the upcoming State Duma elections, Russian authorities have also ramped up pressure on international online platforms, Reporters Without Borders notes. The mass protest movement that arose after opposition politician Alexei Navalny’s imprisonment was organized mainly online—on social networks. For Russians, social media is the second most important source of political news after television. According to a February 2021 poll by the independent Levada Center, 64% of respondents get their news mainly from TV, 42% from social networks, and 39% from online media.

After the protests, courts began imposing exorbitant fines on online platforms for “involving minors in illegal activities” and failing to remove prohibited content.

Notably, most of these court decisions targeted Western internet platforms, while others, such as China’s TikTok or Russia’s VKontakte, faced much less scrutiny—even though most protest participants received information and communicated there. The fines imposed on Twitter in the first half of 2021 were ten times higher than those imposed on VKontakte during the same period.

In spring 2021, Roskomnadzor slowed down Twitter’s loading speeds for several weeks. The report’s authors see this move—targeting Russia’s least popular platform—as a clear warning to bigger players like Google and Facebook.

Legislation

In addition to liability for failing to remove content, foreign platforms are now required to open offices in Russia. The country also passed a law mandating the pre-installation of domestic apps on devices.

“Such pre-installation is not only an extra burden for developers and unnecessary bloatware for users, but also another layer of surveillance—tracking users, their movements, their messages, and so on,” comments Roskomsvoboda head Artyom Kozlyuk.

Another new law prohibits organizations and agencies from publishing personal data of law enforcement officers, especially information about their property. The law expands the list of people whose data is specially protected: not only employees of ministries, the judiciary, the Audit Chamber, security services, military, police, and customs (“siloviki”), but also their “close relatives.”

Pressure on IT Specialists and Entrepreneurs

Since the “sovereign internet” law was passed in November 2019, Russian agencies have increasingly targeted IT specialists and entrepreneurs. On June 3, 2021, the FSB expelled well-known internet expert Alexey Semyonyaka from Russia, accusing him of spying for Ukraine’s Security Service and banning him from entering Russia for 25 years.

In December 2019, police raided the Moscow office of NGINX, developer of one of the world’s most popular web servers.

In mid-December 2019, renowned scientist Alexey Soldatov, considered one of the founders of the Russian internet, was placed under house arrest. His son, journalist Andrei Soldatov, specializes in researching security services and surveillance mechanisms. Alexey Soldatov and two business partners were charged with large-scale fraud. He was released from house arrest after transferring the “.SU” domain rights to the state.

Crackdown on Encryption

In early 2020, Russian agencies blocked access to several foreign email services offering end-to-end encryption. The first to be blocked were the Dutch service Startmail and the Swiss service Protonmail, allegedly because they were used to send false bomb threats. In February 2020, the German service Tutanota was blocked. However, Roskomnadzor withdrew its lawsuit against Berlin-based Mailbox.org after the operator agreed to register as an “information distributor,” but stated it would not store user data on Russian servers. Blocked email services can still be accessed in Russia via the TOR browser. In the first half of 2021, about 320,000 people in Russia used this workaround daily—the second highest number in the world after the US.

The attempt to block the messenger Telegram, developed by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, also failed. Telegram was one of the first to offer end-to-end encryption, quickly gaining popularity in Russia. Since Durov refused to cooperate with authorities or provide user data, Telegram was banned in April 2018. However, agencies failed to technically enforce the ban, disrupting thousands of unrelated sites in the process.

Ironically, Telegram is now used not only by ordinary citizens but also by government bodies such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the coronavirus task force. On June 18, 2020, Roskomnadzor lifted the ban.

In mid-May 2021, Roskomnadzor again targeted VPN services that allow users to bypass censorship and restrictions. As part of creating a centralized system to combat circumvention, the agency requested information from companies about their use of VPN services.

Recommendations

Reporters Without Borders calls on the Russian government and parliament to:

• Repeal the “foreign agent” and “undesirable organization” designations for journalists and media, remove related restrictions, and stop hindering journalistic activity;
• Immediately release journalists and bloggers imprisoned for their online publications;
• Repeal laws that restrict or criminalize citizens’ digital rights, such as freedom of speech and press, and implement the relevant provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Russian Constitution (Article 29: freedom of thought and speech; Article 23: right to privacy and secrecy of correspondence; Article 24: prohibition on collecting, storing, using, and disseminating personal information without consent);
• Restore access to unlawfully blocked online resources and materials, and only block content with a court order that can be appealed in independent courts;
• Not require email and messenger operators to include backdoors for accessing encrypted communications;
• Ensure free use of VPNs and anonymizers;
• Stop attempts to disconnect the Russian segment of the internet from the global network and to promote internet fragmentation.

Additionally, Reporters Without Borders recommends that companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

• Recognize their responsibility as information intermediaries and guarantee Russian users’ rights to freedom of speech and privacy (Articles 19 and 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights), as well as ensure proper data protection;
• Fulfill their human rights obligations and reject Russian authorities’ demands to censor or unlawfully control internet content, especially when such demands are not backed by independent court decisions or violate international human rights standards;
• Not store user data on servers in Russia and only provide data to authorities when such requests comply with the rule of law;
• Publish information about what data their programs and apps collect and in what form.