Sanctions, Sovereignty, Surveillance: How War in Ukraine Reshapes the Infrastructures of Russian Internet

• In Event: Digital Sovereignty in the Time of War

Abstract

This paper analyzes the materiality of the Russia's digital sovereignty project and the impact of the war in Ukraine on its infrastructures. Based on an interdisciplinary field survey that crosses the STS approach (ethnography of infrastructures), OSINT methods and the tools of network measurements, this research follows various electronic components and modules that make up the machinery underlying the Sovereign Runet project. It tracks how international sanctions impact the ability of Russia to build its National Internet. It also examines how retro-engineering surveillance technologies and tracing the origins of electronic components become a new form of anti-war activism.

Author

• Ksenia Ermoshina, CNRS / Citizen Lab (France)