WHAT IS THE RUSSIAN FOR FACEBOOK? AN: Every time it follows the route which appears at that moment to be the fastest. How can that be banned? And what law can specify it? The reason they haven’t introduced it yet is because they can’t work out how to formulate it. *** The Kremlin’s official position on social media is self-contradictory. If the Internet is a conduit for colour revolutions, why would America want to disconnect Russia from it? Here is what Vladimir Putin said in a speech at a meeting of the Russian Security Council on 1 October 2014, which was devoted to countering threats to national security in the digital sphere. Many people were afraid he would take an axe to the problem, and were very relieved when the president promised not to act rashly. “We can see that certain countries are trying to exploit their dominance in the field of global information to achieve not only economic, but also military and political objectives. They actively use information systems as an instrument of ‘soft power’ to promote their interests ...” Of course, it was no secret which “certain countries” he was talking about exactly. The president’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, had named the country even before the council met: “We hear crazy calls to cut Russia out of SWIFT, and there is no certainty that tomorrow we will not be hearing the same crazy voices calling for Russia to be disconnected from the Internet. The main administrator of the global Internet is the US, and Russia needs to be able to defend her interests.” Minister of Telecom Nikolay Nikiforov promised to “work through the various scenarios.” “Recently Russia has encountered the unilateral language of sanctions. In these circumstances, we are looking at scenarios in which our dear partners might suddenly decide to turn off our Internet.” These labours had their glorious culmination in interagency exercises to safeguard the Russian segment of the Internet or, as the president put it, “deliver sovereignty in this area.” The exercises proceeded on the basis that the US and its allies had undertaken “malicious acts” that led to shutting Russia out of the Internet. In order to avoid this, Russia disconnected from the Internet itself. Again we get “anti-sanctions”. The malign West doesn’t actually need to do anything: Russia does everything herself. Quite apart from the wiles of foreign enemies, there is a federal law “On telecommunications”, which provides for suspending or limiting the use of communications networks in an emergency, which includes mass protests in the country. Apparently, the exercises did not satisfy those who had organized them, and this spring the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications and Roskomnadzor conducted a further experiment. As Andrew Semerikov, chairman of the board of the ISP, ER-Telecom, explained at a press conference on 14 October, the exercises again came to grief: 15