Russia has spent more than a decade building a system of total digital surveillance: from the SORM interception infrastructure to the state-promoted MAX messenger. Investigative journalist Andrey Zakharov, author of “The Russian Cyberpunk. How the Kremlin Builds a Digital GULAG”, explained Veridica how data turns into criminal cases, why the system runs above all on fear, and why its weakness is built into its very design.
Russia’s struggle with the open proves that the Kremlin is trying to reorganize everyday life around the logic of security, control and dependence on state-approved infrastructure. The paradox is that this attack is directed against one of the few spheres where Russia had real modernizing potential: its digital economy.
Russia’s internet is being reshaped from an infrastructure that once served society, the state, and business into an instrument of control.
Pro-Russian communication channels have significantly infiltrated the Internet and social media platforms in Poland and Eastern European countries.
