Russia's disconnection from Western online services adds to fears of a “splinternet”, or networks with incompatible protocols diverging from the global internet
If Russia disconnects from—or is booted from— the internet's governing bodies, the internet may never be the same again for any of us.
Context & Ripple Effects
Russia has been building toward this moment for years: Putin signed the sovereign internet bill in 2019, and the law giving the Kremlin a kill switch to disconnect the country from the global web took effect that November. What was framed then as defensive infrastructure is now being stress-tested from the outside, as Western providers pull away — Cogent cut its backbone ties with Russian clients, including state-owned Rostelecom, in the first week of the invasion.
That makes the splinternet question two-sided: Russia's own disconnection capability plus Western services and carriers severing links. The later record of [[a:1167871|domestic throttling and intermittent blackouts that drew criticism from citizens and politicians]] shows the sovereign-internet machinery being used not just as a contingency, but as routine control.
First-order effects
- Russian users and firms lose access to Western online services and transit capacity, with Cogent's cutoff leaving Rostelecom without a major international backbone provider.
- The Kremlin's sovereign-internet infrastructure, built under the 2019 law, shifts from dormant contingency to active tool as disconnection and throttling become operating reality.
Second-order effects
- Other backbone operators and Western service providers face pressure to follow Cogent's precedent, turning commercial peering decisions into instruments of sanctions policy.
- Russian state telecoms and domestic platforms gain a captive market as foreign services exit, accelerating substitution with homegrown alternatives inside the walled network.
Third-order effects
- If a major economy can be severed from the internet's governing bodies without the network fragmenting into incompatible protocols, the splinternet stays a threat rather than a fait accompli — but each cutoff normalizes connectivity as a geopolitical lever.
- The pattern points toward bloc-aligned network governance, where sovereign kill switches and Western carrier withdrawals together make internet access contingent on political alignment rather than open interconnection.
The trend: The internet's technical unity is being eroded by both state disconnection laws and Western provider withdrawals, making connectivity an instrument of geopolitics rather than a neutral layer.