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The Russian authorities have launched a large-scale exercise to test the readiness of the national Internet infrastructure (Runet) to operate in isolation from the global network. According to the Time Ukraine Israel portal, citing Liga, the exercise was organised in accordance with the law on the “sovereign Runet”.
The purpose of the exercise and its key aspects
The main goal of the events is to test the resilience of the Internet infrastructure to external threats and assess the efficiency of systems that are supposed to replace global services. In cooperation with Russian telecoms operators, the tests include:
- Identify the dependence of information systems on external resources, such as libraries, services, or cloud platforms.
- Check the functionality of the Russian Internet in case of disconnection from the global Internet.
According to Roskomnadzor, these measures are the next stage in the creation of a fully autonomous Internet system that will not depend on external providers and global networks.
Local disruptions in the regions
During the exercises, residents of Dagestan have already experienced interruptions in the Internet, including the inaccessibility of popular messengers such as Telegram and WhatsApp. Representatives of local providers say that the outage occurred without warning, and they do not know the list of blocked resources.
Preliminary results and challenges
In July 2023, Russia already conducted similar exercises, which the authorities recognised as successful. At the same time, international experts and representatives of the IT community warn of the risks of isolation: complete autonomy of the Internet could significantly complicate the exchange of information and the country’s technological development.
It is important to note that in the autumn of this year, Ukrainian hackers from the IT Army carried out a series of attacks on the largest Russian telecommunications companies, which caused temporary network disruptions.
The creation of a “sovereign Runet” could change Russia’s technological landscape, but its practical implementation poses numerous challenges. The conditions of information isolation may affect not only access to global resources, but also the operation of internal information systems.
