From hippies to hackers: New film tracks saga of Russia’s Internet

Russian journalist, documentary filmmaker Andrei Loshak speaks during an interview with AFP in Moscow on May 31, 2019. (Photo by Yuri KADOBNOV / AFP)

MOSCOW: In the early days of Russia's Internet, hippies founded the first telecoms venture with Americans, an astrophysicist ran the country's most visited website and providers punished hackers by kneecapping them with baseball bats.

The heady time, which coincided with the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, is the subject of a new documentary that looks back at a very different era as the Kremlin clamps down on internet freedom in present-day Russia.