Russia preparing to be cut off from Internet, but doesn’t want to disconnect – Kremlin

Russian authorities support online freedom, just like those who rallied in Moscow on weekend, and only want to protect the Russian web from foreign intrusion, Dmitry Peskov, the presidential press secretary, said.

Some 6,500 people took to the streets in the Russian capital on weekend to decry the draft law regulating autonomous operations of the Russian segment of the internet, according to police estimations.

But Peskov insisted that fears of the protestors that the legislation will put the web under strict state control were misplaced because “everybody stands for internet freedom – the authors of this law; the presidential administration; the government.”

“In this regard, the position of the participants of the rally should be supported. But there can be no support for their misunderstanding and misconception that the draft law is in some way aimed at limiting online liberties.”

What the authorities are doing is trying to “assure [the] viability of the Internet in case of potential aggressive actions in cyberspace against our country,” the press-secretary explained.

He recalled that one of the speakers at the rally claimed that the Kremlin “just wants to press a button and switch the Internet off,” and labeled that statement as “absolutely wrong.”

“Why aren’t they concerned that somebody on the other side of the Atlantic will press this button? Because this is what one should really worry about,” Peskov said.

A draft law on stable operations of the Russian internet passed the first reading in the parliament mid-February. The authors of the initiative suggest that infrastructure should be created to allow ‘runet’ to work in autonomous mode. They also propose a reduction in the amount of data from Russian users transferred abroad and want providers to track the source of transmitted traffic.

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