Moscow Planning to Slow Down Internet Speeds to Where They were in the 1990s, Grozev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 12 – The Russian government is working on a plan to slow the speed of transmission on the Internet of all services which refuse to agree to provide Moscow with information about their users to what it was in the 1990s, thus destroying any anonymity for surfers and intimidating Russians into avoiding using the world wide web, Khristo Grozev says.

            The Bellingcat investigative journalist outlined this plan in a presentation to this year’s Lennart Meri Conference in Tallinn saying he has sources on this within the Russian special services (youtube.com/watch?v=mrV1praY6t8&t=1879s&ab_channel=LennartMeriConference and ehorussia.com/new/node/24254).

            Grozev said that within two years, Moscow will have the capacity within two years to slow down transmission speeds to 24 kilobytes per second, returning users to the situation they faced in the 1990s when they used dial-up services. Most Western sites are so picture heavy now that such a slowdown would lead most Russians to avoid using them.

            While the Russian foreign ministry dismissed the Tallinn forum as a group of “rabid Russophobes,” Moscow officials continued to work at the very same time in the very direction Grozev described, blocking six VPN services in Russia, services that users employ to prevent those monitoring the Internet from getting their names.

            Many Western and some Russian analysts have suggested that Moscow can’t technically block the Internet unless it took steps that would have such a negative impact on the economy that even the Kremlin wouldn’t be prepared to go that far. But a slowdown of the kind Grozev mentions is something they could live with.

            And that makes the Bellingcat reporter’s words important as an indication of just how Moscow plans to proceed.