An investigation based on nearly 160K Roskomnadzor documents details Russia's expansive surveillance and censorship apparatus, which helps Putin maintain power
Four days into the war in Ukraine, Russia's expansive surveillance and censorship apparatus was already hard at work. Tweets: @paulmozur , @bbhorne , @bbhorne , @fcdservicea_llc , @fcdservicea_llc , @kevincollier , @serghei , @fcdservicea_llc , @puiwingtam , @kimzetter , @silvermanjacob , @paulmozur , @paulmozur , @davidenrich , @paulmozur , @leonidragozin , @jane__bradley , @dylanprimakoff , @paulmozur , @paulmozur , @profcarroll , @satariano , @cgreensit , @satariano , @rmac18 , and @satariano Tweets: Paul Mozur / @paulmozur : We spent months digging through a 700 gigabyte cache from within Russia's de facto internet intel agency Roskomnadzor. It gave us one of the most complete pictures yet of Putin's efforts to control the internet. It is at turns farcical and terrifying. https://www.nytimes.com/... @bbhorne : #Roskomnadzor was published by #DDoSecrets in March (see: https://ddosecrets.substack.com/ ...). It's great to see the US media begin to use the dataset. New story today: https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... @bbhorne : No matter how often NY Times makes the same mistake: we are exactly the same as them, & are not activists. We are publishers. We publish without a paywall. We accept donations, and are a registered non-profit. Donate here: https://secure.actblue.com/... #Roskomnadzor https://twitter.com/... @fcdservicea_llc : These suggest Roskomnadzor Is positioning itself as an open source monitor passing investigative leads based on social media, etc. to other law enforcement agencies, which have the administrative power to open cases and use tools like SORM for a deeper look at opponents. https://twitter.com/... @fcdservicea_llc : At the office with the other agents of social control, memeing. https://twitter.com/... Kevin Collier / @kevincollier : This is really impressive journalism, and as far as I know it's the first major English-language news report to dive deep into one of the giant caches of Russian documents leaked by hacktivists earlier this year and laundered by DDoSecrets. https://www.nytimes.com/... Sergiu Gatlan / @serghei : “Since the agency was established in 2008, Mr. Putin has turned [Roskomnadzor] into an essential lever to tighten his grip on power as he has transformed Russia into an even more authoritarian state.” https://twitter.com/... @fcdservicea_llc : This analysis of documents demonstrates how Roskomnadzor has become an appendage of the state security apparatus in Russia, enhancing FSB and FSO missions, as @AndreiSoldatov notes. It also shows the “regulator”—like those services—misapprehension what “soft power” actually is. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Pui-Wing Tam / @puiwingtam : Terrific deep dive by @paulmozur @satariano @Aaron_Krolik @alizauf on Russia's secretive internet regulator and how it surveils, censors and acts as an intelligence agency. It's become critical in a techno-authoritarian system. https://www.nytimes.com/... Kim Zetter / @kimzetter : From a cache of documents that were hacked and leaked to @natsecgeek and #DDoSecrets https://twitter.com/... @silvermanjacob : Based on leaked docs published by DDoSecrets, which is still banned by Twitter. https://t.co/AnT7uuFv96 @paulmozur : The attention to detail from one small team in one tiny part of Russia is startling. They chronicle anti-war walks and complaints about inflation. At times the reports sound like weather forecasts. “Calm with separate minor pockets of tension,” one said after a dissident arrest. https://twitter.com/... @paulmozur : Yet there was also a doofus element to their work. In China much of this is part automated. In Russia, much was done by hand. Elaborate flow charts mapped the social media accounts of key figures and media sites, describing them as oppositional, neutral or pro government. https://twitter.com/... David Enrich / @davidenrich : An extraordinary and alarming look inside Putin's digital surveillance state. Great work by @paulmozur @satariano @Aaron_Krolik @alizauf, who built software to analyze 700GB of leaked Russian records. https://www.nytimes.com/... @paulmozur : The censors emerge as bureaucrats dutifully doing a grinding job. Often they took screen caps of their own screens with the clock open on the bottom left to show when they had identified a particular criticism or curse word. https://twitter.com/... @leonidragozin : A very interesting insight into Putin's system of total control which makes organised opposition politics virtually impossible. https://twitter.com/... Jane Bradley / @jane__bradley : 'The leak of the agency's documents “is just like a small keyhole look into the actual scale of the censorship and internet surveillance in Russia” — Blockbuster investigation by @satariano @paulmozur @alizauf @Aaron_Krolik based on 160,000 leaked files. https://www.nytimes.com/... Dylan Primakoff / @dylanprimakoff : Fantastic reporting analyzing leaked documents from RosKomNadzor, the Russian government agency overseeing the internet. RKN's role as a censor is well known, but this shows the agency involved in wide-reaching surveillance in support of suppressing dissent in a range of forms. https://twitter.com/... @paulmozur : They worked closely w/ security forces. Charts mapped how often they should report back to KGB successor, the FSB. In an older letter to FSB they worried Navalny's supporters were uniting “various small oppositional regional communities into a ‘united front.’” Part of the letter: https://twitter.com/... @paulmozur : As Russia's invasion of Ukraine proceeded, local officials in Bashkortostan, a republic east of Moscow where the files are from, noted down in detail online discontent and protests. They tallied views, likes, specific criticism of Putin, and updated dossiers of worst offenders. https://twitter.com/... David Carroll / @profcarroll : Putin's digital oppression runs far deeper than previously known. Documents reveal how he's built a dystopia of invasive surveillance, crushing censorship, and systematic intimidation. A deeply unfree dictatorship is better understood. #GiftLink https://www.nytimes.com/... Adam Satariano / @satariano : Roskomnadzor closely monitored websites, social media and news outlets — labeling them “pro-government” and “anti-government.” In reports like this, censors flagged online criticism of the Ukraine war. https://twitter.com/... Charlotte Greensit / @cgreensit : It has morphed over the years from a sleepy telecom regulator into a full-blown intelligence agency, closely monitoring websites, social media and news outlets, and labeling them as “pro-government,” “anti-government” or “apolitical.” https://www.nytimes.com/... Adam Satariano / @satariano : @paulmozur ... Roskomnadzor, the internet regulator, is a critical piece of Putin's security state, according to the leaked records. It blocks services like Twitter and Instagram, but also serves as an intelligence gatherer that hunts for new threats. Here, a report details criticism of Putin: https://twitter.com/... Ryan Mac / @rmac18 : If you read one story today, make it this barnburner on Russia's internet surveillance of its own people from @paulmozur, @satariano, @Aaron_Krolik and @alizauf https://www.nytimes.com/... Adam Satariano / @satariano : This is how internet censorship works from inside the Russian government. We reviewed years of internal files to report how authorities found and tracked opponents, squashed dissent and suppressed information. w/ @paulmozur, @Aaron_Krolik & @alizauf https://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The leak lands at the center of an arc this coverage has been building since early in the war: within days of the invasion, Roskomnadzor moved to block Facebook and Russia's leading ISPs restricted Twitter, while platform-side confusion — like Twitter mistakenly suspending accounts posting about Russian military movements — showed how opaque the censorship machinery was even to the companies inside it.
What the Times adds is the internal view: a roughly 160K-document cache showing how Roskomnadzor labels sites pro- or anti-government, tracks online discontent down to regional protest monitoring in Bashkortostan, and coordinates with the FSB and FSO. It also connects backward to the flourishing market for bought personal data that already exposed how little privacy Russians had, and forward to the contractor industry building surveillance tools for the FSB.
First-order effects
- Western platforms operating in Russia — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram — now face documented evidence of exactly how their services were monitored and labeled by Roskomnadzor, sharpening decisions about whether to comply or exit.
- Russian users and regional activists lose anonymity assumptions: the files show granular tracking of online discontent and protest organizing, including in Bashkortostan.
Second-order effects
- The oligarch-linked contractor ecosystem supplying the FSB with surveillance tooling comes under renewed scrutiny from sanctions enforcers and researchers now armed with leaked procurement detail.
- Leak-driven transparency pressures other governments running similar labeling-and-blocking regimes, since DDoSecrets' publication sets a template for exposing censorship bureaucracies from the inside.
Third-order effects
- If leak-based investigations keep mapping state censorship infrastructure, the durable shift is toward censorship capability itself becoming a tracked, sanctionable export — with Russia's FSB-coordinated model as the reference case.
- The pattern points to a bifurcating internet where national censor agencies, not platforms, set the terms of access, pushing companies toward explicit choose-your-compliance decisions per jurisdiction.
The trend: State censorship is consolidating into documented, inter-agency surveillance industries — and investigative leaks are becoming the main external check on them.