More than Half of Internet Cables in Russia Aging and Must Be Replaced, ‘Izvestiya’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 2 – More than 50 percent of the internet cables linking computers together in the Russian Federation are older than their guaranteed life of 25 years and need to be replaced if the system is not going to be subject to repeated breakdowns, according to Russian government documents examined by Izvestiya.

            That finding (iz.ru/2176122/valerii-kodachigov/v-rf-mozhet-potrebovatsya-zamena-poloviny-linij-svyazi) not only because it suggests that the Russian internet system is at risk not just from Kremlin efforts to restrict access but for three larger reasons that call attention to problems a much larger problem.

            And that is this: Moscow has not been maintaining even those infrastructure investments it has made and thus is now seeing them begin to fail as well as those which the Soviet system had made earlier and on which the Putin regime and its immediate Russian predecessor has been living most of the time.

            That is because most internet cable in the Russian Federation as in other countries was laid not 40 or 50 years ago but less than 30. That means that the Kremlin, to ensure it has enough money to fight wars abroad, has not invested in infrastructure that it or its immediate Russian predecessors installed.

            Consequently, the Putin regime at least in this area but likely in many others as well is living off its own past as well as off the Soviet one, an approach for which the bill is certainly coming true, a bill that if the Kremlin doesn’t change course, is going to hurt ever more Russians and the prospect for the development of that country.