Russia conducts exercises, turning off the international Internet

On the night of 4 to 5 July were exercises , within which the organizers decided to turn off the international segment of the Internet. The results of the exercises have not yet been disclosed, but a representative of Roskomnadzor said that the exercises were successful.

This means that Russian telecom operators stopped transmitting traffic through cross-border communication channels and used only internal traffic exchange points. Thus, Runet users could not access sites and services located outside of Russia.

However, the question of the goals pursued by the organizers of the exercises remained unsolved. Representatives of the country’s leading telecommunications companies declined to comment on the event.

One of the experts of the telecommunications market compared the exercise with the testing of bulletproof vests. In his opinion, such checks make it possible to verify the system’s performance in extreme situations.

The Law “On the Sovereign Runet”, adopted in 2019, aims to protect the Russian Internet from external threats. Installation of special equipment on the networks of all operators in the country allows Roskomnadzor to control traffic routing if necessary. Although there have been no cases of Russia disconnecting from the global Internet, the service continues to use installed equipment to block prohibited content and regulate the operation of certain platforms.

The exercises to shut down the international Internet allow Russia to assess the level of its independence in the virtual world and test the performance of the Runet in extreme situations.