Internet Shutdowns Highlight that Moscow is Again Part of Russia, Orekh Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 16 – Especially since launched his expanded war in Ukraine in 2022, Vladimir Puitn has sought to shield Moscow from the greatest impact of that conflict on Russian society, arranging things so that the hardest hit groups were marginal ones typically far from the Russian capital.

             But with his attack on the internet, Anton Orekh says, Moscow is “now Russia” again, something which has profound consequences for Muscovites given their sense of apartness from the rest of the country and for the stability of the Putin regime given its sensitivity to how people in the capital think (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/03/16/moskva-teper-rossiia).

            “We Muscovite live not in Russia,” the commentator says. “We sometimes visit it, but we know this country more in theory” than in practice. Indeed, Russians in Moscow [except for those with professional responsibilities involving the periphery] are more likely to have travelled abroad than to visit the oblasts, krays, and republics of the country.

            This creates a powerful divide: Muscovites ignore what is happening beyond the periphery unless there is some crisis there; while people in the federal subjects are kept up to date on what is happening in Moscow even if there is little or no prospect that they will ever visit the capital, Orekh continues.

            People in many federal subjects have had to make do without the internet, but until now Muscovites have been protected. Now however what has been happening in the rest of the country is happening to them as well. And that means that Muscovites must now again “feel themselves part of Russia.”

            “The Moscow-centric nature of our country was also explained by the central government’s particularly solicitous attitude toward the capital. The government itself is entirely based here, and it understands that if unrest were to flare up in any other region, it wouldn't pose a major problem” as the Khabarovsk events showed.

            Instead, the Kremlin’s “main priority was simply to ensure that everything remained calm in Moscow. In 1991, it took merely a few tens of thousands of Muscovites gathering outside the White House to bring about the collapse of the USSR.” No one among the powers that be wants to risk that again.

            For its rulers, “the capital had to remain content; it was best left undisturbed unless absolutely necessary. Even when the "special military operation" began, the federal leadership turned a blind eye to the fact that Muscovites were rarely being deployed to the front lines; instead, their quotas were filled by newcomers—migrants and visitors—willing to take up arms.”

“In Moscow,” Orekh writes, “much like in the fabled Baghdad, everything has been calm. The recent episode involving the internet, however, demonstrated that even the capital can be jolted out of its comfort zone. That entails a willingness to risk the tranquility of both the capital itself and the authorities.”

              What comes next may be something truly fateful, the crushing even of Moscow, Orekh says; or it may be the transformation of Russia as far as the Internet is concerned into North Korea or Iran, a development which would have its own consequences for Moscow and the regions. Which it will be and which would be worse remains to be seen.