Russians are willing to tolerate a lot, but there is a limit. Russians are angry. Very angry.
The reason for this is the comprehensive internet blockades introduced by the government, which are now disrupting everyday services – from payments in stores, through mobile connections, to taxi apps, and this has led to an unexpected reaction.
In early April, the FSB announced that it had foiled a plot to assassinate senior officials of Roskomnadzor, the Kremlin’s institution in charge of internet censorship.
According to the secret service’s announcement, which was vague and with few details, a group of eight young Russians in four cities planned to blow up the car of a Roskomnadzor official, the analysis for Cepa.org Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov, Russian investigative journalists and co-founders of Agentura.ru, which monitor the activities of the Russian secret service.
One of the alleged attackers, a 20-year-old man, was killed in Moscow on April 18 after allegedly opening fire on FSB agents as they tried to arrest him.
As evidence, the FSB released a video showing a man’s body on the ground next to a gun, as well as footage of the interrogation of several of those arrested, including a young woman who confessed to being involved in the plot.
The FSB claims that the entire operation was organized by Ukrainian security services and that the aim was to disrupt the security of the Russian internet, including Telegram as a social network and messaging app.
Since the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine in 2014, and especially after the full invasion in 2022, assassination campaigns have been conducted against multiple categories of people associated with the Kremlin’s war effort.
First were the organizers of the so-called “people’s republics” in eastern Ukraine – in most cases self-proclaimed leaders of local militias funded and armed by the Russian military and security services.
Most were killed in eastern Ukraine, in explosions or shootings (2015-2016), although some were also targeted in the Moscow region – for example, Yevgeny Zhilin, a key figure in the pro-Russian Kharkiv organization Oplot, was killed in 2016 in a restaurant in the suburbs of Moscow.
Since the beginning of Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine, two new groups have been targeted. One is the army – prominent generals and officers were killed, including the submarine commander, and certain units were attacked, such as the military pilot school in Krasnodar. That attack was carried out by poisoning in October 2023.
Several dozen graduates were celebrating the school’s 20th anniversary at a restaurant in Armavir when a poisoned case of Jameson whiskey and a 20-kilogram cake were delivered. The pilots became suspicious and informed the FSB.
Another group were propagandists, such as Aleksandr Dugin, a fierce pro-war (pro-Putin) nationalist (he survived the August 2022 attack that killed his daughter), as well as so-called “Z-bloggers”, such as former bank robber Vladlen Tatarsky, who died when he was handed a bust of his character.
In most cases, the assassinations appear to have been organized by Ukrainian intelligence services or the Military Intelligence Service (GRU) or the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) rather than local resistance groups, despite attempts by the FSB to portray the Russian opposition as terrorists.
Roskomnadzor employees are clearly a different kind of target – they are neither symbolic figures nor persons directly involved in the fighting in Ukraine.
This doesn’t seem like a departure but, instead, seems like the start of a new trend.
Earlier this year, a 16-year-old Russian entered the reception office of Roskomnadzor and stabbed Alexander Belov, the deputy head of one of the agency’s departments, killing him on the spot.
The teenager did not try to escape and was immediately arrested. The authorities, apparently in an uncomfortable situation, tried to conceal information about the attack – the pro-regime media received strong recommendations not to report on the incident.
Why, then, has this very state agency become the target of violent and deadly attacks?
The latest public opinion polls in Russia show growing anger over a war that has been going on for more than four years and has led to a sharp rise in the cost of living. That feeling was especially strong after the regime’s decision to restrict internet access across the country, especially among young people.
The complete blocking of Telegram – a messaging application and source of information trusted by tens of millions of people – as well as VPN services that allow bypassing of blocks and access to prohibited applications, video games and popular Western music, caused great dissatisfaction.
Attacking Putin personally or openly criticizing the protracted war against Ukraine are still absolutely forbidden and therefore very risky, but internet censors do not have the same protection.
Suddenly, Roskomnadzor, which has been enforcing internet restrictions since 2012, has become the most hated state agency in the country.
This is new. Never before in the Soviet Union or Russia have censors been the primary target of popular anger. They were considered only executors of the will of the Communist Party or the President, nothing more and nothing less.
Such a position exempted them from personal responsibility, while at the same time it served as a justification for limiting access to information.
Not anymore. The Russians no longer seem ready to accept the censors’ claims of their alleged innocence.
The last time Russian state officials were the targets of sustained deadly attacks was in the late 19th century, when revolutionary groups increasingly resorted to violence in their conflict with the tsarist regime.
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