A satellite image shows a destroyed Tu-22 bomber after a drone strike at the Belaya air base in Russia, on June 4. Mobile internet shutdowns in Russia are the collateral damage of war, a response to Ukraine’s spectacular drone attacks on long-range bombers at Russian bases on June 1. Satellite image / Maxar Technologies via the New York Times
Katya’s phone suddenly refused to provide the basics she needed to drive home to Moscow from St Petersburg.
She, her partner and countless others were unable to go online, cut off from their apps for things such as maps, banking, paying road tolls, and buying fuel.
There was no warning, no hint how widespread the outage was, no clue how long it would last — but it wasn’t a surprise, either.
Russia’s mobile internet networks now have frequent blackouts because of the war with Ukraine.
Since last month, authorities have shut those networks down every day in various parts of the country, in unpredictable patterns, for hours at a time.
The goal is to try to thwart attacks by Ukrainian drones that analysts say have used mobile networks for navigation.
It is a big disruption in a country where smartphones provide the only online access for millions of people.
The Government regularly touts an array of online services, including filing tax returns and applying for jobs, and President Vladimir Putin claimed this year that Russia was “a step ahead of many other nations”.
Even so, “they can turn off the internet”, said Katya, 32.
She described how the Government had encouraged reliance on apps and web services — and then exercised control over internet access — as a “digital gulag”. Like others interviewed, she asked to be identified only by her first name out of fear for her safety.
She and her partner made it home from their recent weekend getaway, after struggling with a partially downloaded map and phoning her partner’s mother to top up their debit card to pay for fuel.
The Russian Government has a record of restricting online freedoms, including trying to block the country’s most popular messaging app and throttling YouTube.
But the mobile internet shutdowns are the collateral damage of war, a response to Ukraine’s spectacular drone attacks on long-range bombers at Russian bases on June 1.
Cellphones use parallel mobile networks, one for calls and another for the data used by phone apps — or drones.
The internet blackouts shut down the data network but calls still go through. Wireless connections, which do not depend on mobile networks, can allow phones to stay online.
Day-to-day orders to shut down the mobile internet come from regional officials responding to reported drone intrusions, rather than from Moscow, according to documents viewed by the New York Times.
The Russian Communications Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The Kremlin has been asking regional authorities to put up a defence against the drones — there’s nothing else they can do but turn the internet off,” said Mikhail Klimarev, head of the Internet Protection Society, an exiled Russian digital rights group.
The threat of drones also regularly shuts down Russian airports for hours. About 300 flights were cancelled in Moscow in one weekend alone.
By late this month, the cellular internet was down every day, for at least a few hours, in some part of at least 73 of Russia’s 83 regions, according to a tally by Na Svyazi, a group of volunteers living abroad that monitors internet access in Russia.
Yelena, who lives in Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia, said that her daughter commuted to and from school by bus, paying her way with a transport card, but that the system didn’t work during an outage. A few times, Yelena said, she has had to wire the fare to the bus driver’s phone.
Russians first experienced such shutdowns in the early months of the war, but they were limited to the areas bordering Ukraine.
This year, authorities switched off mobile internet in Moscow for a few days before the annual Victory Day parade in May, a major event for Putin, who was hosting several world leaders, including China’s leader, Xi Jinping.
That outage exposed Muscovites’ reliance on apps for contactless payments, taxis, car sharing, food delivery, and shopping, but discontent was fairly muted.
“The regions used to be wary of potential public repercussions and had not resorted to such shutdowns,” Sarkis Darbinian, a Russian lawyer and internet expert who lives in exile, told the New York Times.
The lack of protests in Moscow gave regional authorities the signal that “you can just turn the internet off” without causing a backlash, he said.
After the Ukrainian attacks on June 1, the shutdowns began to afflict the vast breadth of the country.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, blamed the inconveniences around the Victory Day parade on “a dangerous neighbour”, an apparent reference to Ukraine.
When he was pressed recently about more widespread shutdowns, he said: “Everything that’s linked to ensuring public safety is justified”.
Internet blackouts have hit e-commerce companies and consumers most directly, although the scale of the economic impact is unclear.
They have also hampered businesses not usually associated with phone apps.
In the northwestern city of Pskov, a municipally owned heating company complained last month that it had not been able to finish repairs on a pipeline on time because of the outages.
The internet shutdowns have become so frequent and widespread that they have given rise to online memes and songs. In Rostov-on-Don, Pavel Osipyan, a media personality, released a music video making light of the inconveniences.
“How can you tell you’re from Rostov without saying it?” he rapped. “Show me one bar for the internet.”
In Izhevsk, a city known for weapons production about 1290km from Ukraine, mobile internet has often been turned off since June 1. Arina, 23, said residents there had been calling emergency services, looking for an explanation, only to be told that it was a safety measure and that they should be patient.
The precautions do not always work. In the middle of one shutdown, Ukrainian drones hit a factory in Izhevsk that makes surface-to-air missiles, killing three people and injuring scores more.
No air-raid alert was issued while mobile internet was down, leaving locals unsure what was happening.
Another day, Arina was at home when she said she heard an air-raid siren. She had no idea what was going on: No one could post from the scene.
“The Government keeps mum or says everything is fine, but everyone can see things are not fine,” she said.
Yekaterina Mizulina, head of the pro-Kremlin League for a Safe Internet, asked on social media this month why “the internet is being throttled, and the drones keep coming and coming”.
Many people affected by the blackouts speak of resignation. Neighbours and friends are annoyed but seem to be taking the disruptions as a new norm.
In the courthouses where Sofia, a law student from the southern city of Krasnodar, spends her afternoons, lawyers, their clients and families often chat about the outages, but their reaction tends to be that the shutdowns are just one more burden.
“They just laugh it off,” she said.
Regions from Tula in the southwest to Omsk in Siberia have said recently that they will introduce public wireless internet to allow residents to stay online when mobile networks go down.
Shutdowns have reached the easternmost parts of Russia, which have not been hit by drones, prompting some to question the official rationale.
Artyom, a remote technology worker from Khabarovsk, 25km from the Chinese border, expressed concern that the blackouts could be a part of the Kremlin’s strategy to restrict information. He called it “a very convenient lie” to blame the drone threat.
“Drones don’t make it to Khabarovsk,” he said. “I don’t see any connection here.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Nataliya Vasilyeva and Alina Lobzina
Photographs by: Maxar Technologies, Tyler Hicks
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