Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting during a visit to the Interior Ministry in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2019. Putin hailed the Russian police's performance and urged it to further strengthen efforts to combat extremism and drug-trafficking. (Alexei Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
When anti-government protests erupted on Russia’s side of the Caucasus Mountains in October, authorities did something they’d never done before: cut mobile Internet service to an entire geographical area.
For almost two weeks, tens of thousands of mainly Muslim Russians were prevented from accessing social media sites and sharing videos through their smartphones. Unlike China, where control of the Internet is uniquely centralised, Russia doesn’t yet have an easy way to quarantine negative news, so it had to force commercial carriers to curtail local services one by one.
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