Russian Internet

Russia's State Duma, the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia, adopted in the first reading on Tuesday a bill aimed to ensure security and availability of Russian Internet (Runet) in the event of potential isolation from the global network.

This means that data from its own organisations and users would stay within Russia, rather than be distributed globally.

The bill's text warns of the "violent nature of the U.S. National Cybersecurity Strategy adopted in September 2018," which accuses Russia of alleged hacking attacks "without evidence," said the law's sponsors.

Russia has regularly been accused of cyber attacks on other nations and organisations.

The draft law, called the Digital Economy National Programme, makes sure its internet provision can continue to function in the event of external powers attempting to disable the country's service.

The law's authors say that Russia will unplug itself in case of a major cyber threat.

Russia will be required to create its own version of the internet's address system or Domain Name System (DNS), so it can continue to operate if connections to international servers are interrupted.

Twelve organisations are involved in overseeing the root servers for DNS with none of them based in Russia.

The eventual plan is for all Russian internet traffic to pass through these new routing arrangements.

The project has received support from Russia's president Vladimir Putin.