There are no “Soviet” queues at the “internet counter”, nor ration cards for the daily ration of the web – as described in a dystopian key in a video that has gone viral. But gatherings yes. In front of McDonald’s, which will be called from 2022 Vkusno i Tochka. In front of all the clubs in Moscow with a good router. Nothing 5Gnor 4G. Mobile connectivity, absent. Network failure. It’s Wi-Fi or death (digital). Defitsit means “deficit”. But also scarcity. Lack of a product. It’s a word that weighs heavily on Russian memory.
At the end of the USSR there was defitsit of everything. From sausages to toilet paper. Entire days in queues. We queued up even without knowing what the shop was selling. If there was a queue, they were selling something. Invariably, an ambiguous type approached the crowd. He offered a pair of jeans. A walkman. Pink Floyd pirated cassettes. The character also appears in the viral clip. But offers VPN: “Good stuff, from Mexico. Good price.” The young actors who star in the video were not born. But the reference to the times of deficits and of chyorny rynokthe black market, it’s clear.
No internet? We buy radios
“The Yandex Taxi app doesn’t work,” he says Vitaly at Fanpage.it. He notices this at the Kursky railway station, Basmanny district. Full center of Moscow. A button appears on the display: “Call to book”. Cash only, though. Vitaly then goes to an ATM. He can’t withdraw. His card is on the smartphone. No connection, no money. Walk home. “All health,” he jokes.
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Vitaly took it well. Others don’t. “I’m furious,” says Marina. “From Park Kultury to Ostozhenka (other central areas of the capital, ed.) no network. Even between the Kitay-Gorod and Kurskaya metro, no connection. No information. What if I had an emergency? What if I had to call an ambulance?”.
We make do. Between March 6th and 10th walkie talkie sales and radio sets have gone up 27%the Wildberries marketplace announced. Landlines, plus 25%. Pagers, 73% increase. Then it turns out that the pagers have been disconnected for years. Useless objects. The Chitai-Gorod retail chain reports that it has more than doubled its revenue from street maps. The GPS, always uncertain around the Kremlin, has now completely disappeared. Russian media are talking about a return of MP3 players. “Eh, good idea”, comments our Navy. “Yesterday I tried to listen to music on Apple Music but nothing loaded”.
Security without a net: Moscow’s strategy
“We are not yet at digital authoritarianism”Sarkis Darbinyan, a lawyer specializing in IT law, co-founder of the digital freedom agencies Roskomsvoboda and RKS Global, explains to Fanpage.it. “We are seeing something different: the Kremlin fears attacks at the top of the state.” The lack of connectivity in Moscow “has security reasons”. This has already been seen in other strategic areas of the country. Where there are sensitive military bases. Like those of nuclear submarines. It all started after Operation Pavutyna, “Cobweb”. The June 1, 2025 more than a hundred Ukrainian drones attacked Russian strategic air bases. Sort of Pearl Harbour. Dozens of bombers destroyed and damaged. Psychological shock. Kremlin enraged.
“Over the past nine months, regional governors have learned a simple lesson,” says Mikhail Klimarev, head of VPN Generator and the NGO Internet Protection Society (OZI): “Shutting down mobile internet works. It blocks drones. It stops remote control. It negates the risk. And it prevents the Kremlin’s wrath.” Ordering the shutdown is easy. For the authorities it has become a kind of drug. The method arrived in Moscow. But why now?
Putin’s (expensive) fear
“It’s because they’re very scared in the Kremlin,” Klimarev replies to Fanpage.it. “Putin is terrified of being the target of a targeted attack.” The Tsar does not want to end up like Khamenei. Spotted and killed, along with quite a few collateral victims, in one megacities like Tehran. Like Moscow. There is always upstream HUMINTfield agents. But today the risk is also digital. Mobile networks, cells, smartphones. Cameras, public and private. They are everywhere, in big cities. The network becomes a weapon. And the answer is to turn it off. Moscow’s internet troubles began three days after the assassination of Khamenei.
Putin’s obsession with security is justified. Ukrainian services strike with precision. They have already eliminated figures close to power in Russia. But there are fears of targeted assassinations even by more senior actors west of Kiev. Invisible threats. Donald Trump has become the subject of fierce criticism from the president’s most influential advisers. Dmitri Trenin, former GRU colonel, is among the inspirers of Russian foreign policy. PFor him, the dialogue with the USA is over. Anchorage is a thing of the past. Trust, too. He just wrote it in an article that everyone is talking about in the capital.
Obsession with security comes at a price. High. In Moscow, every day of unstable Internet costs 4.8 billion rubles. About 53 million euros. OZI, Mikhail Klimarev’s organization, calculates this. In 2025, there were 57 outages in the oblasts of the Federation. Over 37,000 hours. World record. The bill: almost 11 billion euros. The data is in a search by Top10VPN. Which signals the use of the “16 KB curtain”: a technique that limits Western sites to loading the first 16 kilobytes, making them unusable, while Russian services remain active.
“The FSB is in charge of Russian telecommunications”
THE Big Four of mobile telephony in Russia are STD, MegaFon, T2 And Beeline. According to local media, only Beeline admitted disruptions in Moscow. Due to “external restrictions”. From T2 they are more vague: “Any problems do not depend on the operator”, they simply say. The reality is different. The authorities are inside the telcos. They can block everything directly. From the inside.
“Two FSB officials are part of the company,” a person with direct knowledge of the organization of one of the four large Russian operators reveals to Fanpage.it. “They have their own office. They are on the board of directors. They decide. Without opposition.” In the case of a shutdown order, “they just have to send it internally to the NOC, the center that manages the network. From there, it is executed. Nothing else is needed.” Turning off the internet is easy. For the Kremlin, it is immediate leverage.
Since February 21st, a law has strengthened the powers of the FSB, the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. Upon order of the president, he can turn off or limit the internet. It’s completely legal. Putin cares about the regulatory framework. He considers himself a jurist. The rules must be there, even when they stifle civil rights. By law, in Putin’s Russia the secret services can enter the networks of operators. And monitor everyone’s everything: calls, SMS, messages, emails. “There is a technical system on a national scale. Parallel to that of telephone companies”, clarifies our source. “The FSB doesn’t have to ask.” It can directly spy on citizens. Always. It’s legal.
An unstable whitelist: sites granted by Putin
It is not yet complete digital authoritarianism. It’s something in between. There is a blacklist. Social media and apps: WhatsApp, Signal, Youtube, some VPNs. Sarkis Darbinyan’s organization also identified a “grey list” of subnets. IP addresses considered suspicious. The shutdowns in Moscow also become a test. A laboratory. We try a more closed model, with selective access. A whitelist of sovereign sites already exists but “it is not stable or definitive”, says Darbinyan.
The list includes the Max Status app. Mandatory, and that no one wants to use. But a foreign bank has just also been included, reports the digital lawyer: the British Barclays. The border remains open. A total closure is not worth it. The economic system still depends on the outside world. Despite the isolation from the West after the invasion of Ukraine.
For whom the bell tolls
Russian newspapers talk about protest attempts. Demonstrations were banned. All. Reason: “Does not comply with the law”reports Nezavisimaya Gazeta. “Discontent is growing”, a courageous journalist who deals with political sociology comments to Fanpage.it from Moscow, Andrei Kolesnikov: “The intrusion of the State into the internet, the habitat of the middle class, exacerbates an already difficult situation due to inflation and stagnation. And it affects small and medium-sized companies: logistical and communication problems, difficulties in payments.”
Repression does not allow us to take to the streets. In society, the apathy of those who know they cannot influence decisions wins. Digital shutdowns prove that “the logic of an authoritarian regime feeds itself”, underlines Kolesnikov. “He seeks total control, à la Orwell. And slides towards a semi-totalitarian system.” The regime will not waver now. But he is “undermined by a time bomb”. By touching the internet “he becomes hostile not only to his liberal opponents, but to society as a whole.”
Urbanized Russia is years ahead of Italy in terms of digitalization. Provoking the defitsit of the network the regime has taken one step too far. The Muscovite intellectual concludes with a quote from John Donne: “The time has come for us Russians to no longer ask who the bell tolls for. It tolls for each of us.”
