The World Ahead 2022
Vladimir Putin will renew his attacks on elections and the internet
But can he tame YouTube?
THE POISONING in 2020 and imprisonment in 2021 of Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition leader, marked the transformation of Vladimir Putin’s regime from a consensual autocracy into tyranny, where a small group of people exercise power without legal or constitutional constraints. As the Kremlin consolidates this transformation, two remnants of democracy inherited from the 1990s stand in its way. One is elections, the other is the freedom of the internet. Both are being steamrolled.
Start with the elections. In 2021 Mr Putin threw out constitutional restrictions that demanded he step down in 2024. He can now rule until at least 2036 and probably beyond, but he still needs to dress his power grab in electoral finery. Yet as the parliamentary elections held in September 2021 showed, the decline in support for Mr Putin’s regime is no obstacle to victory.
Had the result not been fixed, Mr Putin’s United Russia party would have received just over 30% of the vote, according to Sergey Shpilkin, a data analyst. Instead it has claimed nearly 50% of the vote and a supermajority in the Duma. By jailing Mr Navalny, chasing his associates out of Russia and cracking down on anyone who supports him, the Kremlin has in effect banned participatory politics. The aim is to retain elections, but get rid of any alternative to Mr Putin.
The biggest challenge to the Kremlin comes from the internet
Yet the physical suppression of his opponents is no longer sufficient. The biggest challenge to the Kremlin comes from the internet, which enables civil society to organise and has elevated Mr Navalny to be the leading opposition politician, recognised by the majority of the country.
Until recently, the Russian internet remained quite free. Mr Putin rose to power through television and considered the internet marginal. (He likes to boast about never going online, using a computer or owning a mobile phone.)
But over the past decade the spread of the internet has rendered the Kremlin’s monopoly over television useless. The share of the internet and social media among all sources of information has grown from 18% in 2013-15 to 45% in 2021. Mr Navalny was banned from state-controlled television channels, but his YouTube audience is comparable in size to that of any state-television news programme.
The Kremlin has banned all websites linked to Mr Navalny by deeming them “extremist”. It has installed equipment and compelled providers to hamper access to Twitter so that pictures and videos do not upload. It has threatened the Russian staff of Apple and Google with criminal proceedings in order to remove Mr Navalny’s app from their stores. Media organisations and journalists have been declared “foreign agents”, making it almost impossible to operate in Russia.
But the biggest problem it has is with YouTube, Google’s video-hosting platform. Though Google is increasingly compliant with Russia’s demands to remove content, it continues to host Mr Navalny’s films, which attract tens of millions of views. Blocking YouTube is problematic. The service is used by millions of Russians who have little interest in politics but would be outraged if it were unavailable.
The Kremlin will increase pressure on Google to fall into line: it may slow down its search engine and impose fines. And it will continue to develop its own video-hosting platform, RuTube, to which it can move popular content, then switch off YouTube if necessary. Restoring a monopoly over information is central to Mr Putin’s power. The war over the internet will define Russia’s near future.
Arkady Ostrovsky: Russia editor, The Economist■
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition of The World Ahead 2022 under the headline “Russia’s battlegrounds”