Russia’s leadership is racing to build a kind of digital drawbridge, one that can be yanked up on command to separate the country’s online life from the rest of the world. Starting in 2026, regulators will gain sweeping new powers to reroute traffic, filter content with artificial intelligence and store private messages for years, all in the name of “sovereignty” and security. The result will not be a clean break so much as a fragile, heavily policed network that reshapes daily life for citizens and rewires how the state projects power.
The stakes are not abstract. From mobile outages that already disrupt basic services to laws that would let security agencies shut down access outright, the Kremlin is testing how far it can go without triggering economic self-harm or public backlash. What happens next will determine whether Russia becomes a tightly managed “intranet” plugged into the world only on official terms, or a patchwork of official controls and underground workarounds that the state struggles to contain.
The legal kill switch: from “digital sovereignty” to off‑switch
The first piece of this puzzle is legal, not technical. Over the past several years, the authorities have framed a sweeping campaign of online control as a matter of national defense, positioning Russia as a besieged fortress in an information war. A strategic document that runs until 2033 lays out how the Kremlin intends to isolate the national segment of the network from “dissemination of prohibited information,” effectively building the legal scaffolding for a self-contained RuNet that can be sealed off from outside traffic when the leadership decides it is necessary.
That legal scaffolding is now being fitted with a very real switch. A bill advanced in the State Duma would allow the Federal Security Service, the FSB, to order telecom providers to shut down internet access under broad definitions of threats, going well beyond earlier rules that focused on mobile restrictions in specific regions. Supporters present this as a way to protect the state from security risks, but the same mechanism would let the FSB cut connectivity nationwide during political crises or protests, as described in the proposal to let the agency shut down internet.
Roskomnadzor’s new powers and the architecture of isolation
On paper, the central engineer of this new system is Roskomnadzor, the federal communications watchdog. Starting March 1, 2026, the agency will be able to fully isolate the Russian segment of the internet from the rest of the world by rerouting traffic through state-controlled exchange points and cutting external links. Officials have already approved regulations that define how the “Russian segment” should be managed in emergencies, giving Roskomnadzor authority to intervene directly in routing and traffic flows so that domestic services can, in theory, keep running even if international connections are severed, a role underscored in plans that say Starting March Roskomnadzor will have that capability.
Officials insist this is about resilience, not isolation. A senior lawmaker in the lower house has argued that even after expanding online controls, Russia will remain connected to the global web and that the new rules simply ensure stability under pressure. Yet the same regulatory package centralizes control over cross-border data flows and gives the state the tools to throttle or block external services at will, as seen in the November decision that created a “closed, censored and secure” model for the national network and in the assurances that, Expanding Online Control,, the country will not fully unplug.
AI censors, message hoarding and the new surveillance stack
Technical control is being layered on top of this legal and infrastructural shift. In 2026, Russia plans to launch an artificial intelligence system to censor internet content in real time, scanning posts, videos and messages for banned topics and automatically blocking them. Officials present this as a way to “strengthen information control,” and it comes alongside a reported 59 Percent rise in content blocking as Roskomnadzor prepares AI-based filtering, a trend highlighted when Roskomnadzor Reports that increase and its Filtering Plans for the coming year.
At the same time, new data retention rules will require internet services in the Russian Federation to store user messages for three years starting in 2026, dramatically expanding the state’s ability to reconstruct private conversations after the fact. Combined with AI-driven scanning, this creates a powerful surveillance stack that can be used to track dissent, identify networks of activists and retroactively criminalize speech. The mandate that Russia mandates three-year of user messages from 2026 turns every chat app and email provider into a long-term archive that security agencies can tap.
There is a paradox here. The more aggressively the state hoards messages and automates censorship, the stronger the incentive for users to adopt end-to-end encrypted and decentralized tools that are harder to monitor. Experience in other tightly controlled environments suggests that once a critical mass of urban, digitally literate users shifts to such platforms, surveillance effectiveness can drop sharply, even if headline laws look draconian. That dynamic is already visible in the way Russian authorities are preparing AI systems to chase content across platforms, as seen in plans to Launch AI Powered Internet Censorship System tools that respond to a surge in blocked material.
Everyday life under a “digital iron curtain”
For ordinary Russians, the shift is already tangible. Mobile internet shutdowns linked to the war and security operations have left people unable to make calls, order taxis or pay for groceries on the go, forcing them to stay home for reliable Wi‑Fi and disrupting everything from ride-hailing apps like Yandex Go to contactless payments on the Moscow Metro. These outages are not theoretical stress tests but lived experience, with Russians describing how the outages have left ordinary users frequently unable to use their phones on the go.
State media largely avoids criticizing these measures, especially in the context of the war in Ukraine and coverage of President Vladimir Putin, but some domestic commentators have voiced concern about an “off-switch for the internet” and what it means for business, education and culture. Analysts have described a tightening “digital iron curtain” that constricts the information space and turns social media into a controlled environment, a trend captured in an ANALYSIS of Russia and its Digital Iron Curtain that examines How Russia is reshaping its online sphere.
Can Russia really unplug, and what happens if it tries?
Technically, building a sovereign network is harder than it sounds. Earlier experiments in disconnecting the national infrastructure from the wider web exposed gaps in routing, domestic services and security, with experts warning that the system was not ready for practical use and that a full cut-off would likely cause serious disruptions. One assessment of those tests noted that the Last time the Russian government tried to disconnect its Internet infrastructure from the larger Web, the system was not ready for practical use.
Even if the state manages a cleaner technical separation, the consequences would be uneven. Analyses of hypothetical disconnection scenarios suggest that while the United States might not feel much impact if Russia shut off access to the global internet, Russian users and businesses would face slower connections, broken services and increased vulnerability to domestic failures, since traffic that once flowed through diverse international routes would be forced through a smaller number of state-controlled chokepoints. One such scenario, explored in a study of What happens if Russia cuts itself off, highlights how even if disaster did not strike immediately, data could struggle to get to its destination.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
