As the war in Ukraine escalated, causing more than a million people to flee and spread terror in many cities, the Kremlin blocked media outlets including the BBC, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), as well as several Ukrainian sites, Twitter and Facebook. The Russian government claimed that these sites were spreading false news about the war.
But some media refuse to be silent. In response to the ban, the BBC posted a statement on its website saying: “Access to accurate, independent information is a fundamental human right that cannot be denied to the people of Russia.” He included instructions on how to bypass the media block by accessing BBC content through two apps: Psiphon, a censorship circumvention tool, and Tor, an anonymous browser. VOA also promised in a statement to “promote and support tools and resources that will enable our audience to bypass any measures to block our sites in Russia.”
According to Matthew Baze, VOA’s director of digital strategy and audience development, traffic on the Russian-language VOA site has increased significantly since the intrusion, from 40,000 visits per day to about 250,000, with about 20% of that traffic coming from bypass networks such as VPNs. Patrick Böhler, Head of Digital Strategy, RFE/RL tweeted Last week, CrowdTangle data showed that independent Russian-language news is being shared around the world more often than articles from state media.
The story continues under the ad
The media blockade is an attempt to control the narrative around the invasion, which the Russian government and state media insist on calling it a “special military operation.” But there are workarounds.
VPNs can help users bypass internet restrictions and are already widely used in China, where internet access has long been restricted by the “Great Firewall” that blocks Facebook, Twitter, the New York Times, The Washington Post and other Western media sites. In a post on its website on Saturday, RFE/RL directed people to nthlink, a free VPN service backed by the Open Technology Foundation. RFE also provided a link to its website in the TOR browser, which allows users to search the web anonymously, and encouraged people to join their channel on Telegram, an encrypted messaging platform that Russia tried to ban in 2018.
IN tweet on friday (and a post on its website), the BBC pointed readers to Psiphon, a free and open source application created by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab Internet Freedom Centre. On the other hand, he directed people to access the BBC website through the Tor app, widely used during the 2010 Arab Spring to access blocked social networking sites. For those unable to download any of the apps – given Russia’s crackdown – the BBC suggested that people send a blank email to [email protected] or [email protected] to get a secure link.
Russia’s internet censorship agency announced on March 4 that it plans to block access to Facebook nationwide.
Censorship circumvention is sometimes low-tech. In China, social media users have started posting upside-down screenshots of articles on platforms like Weibo (similar to Twitter). Russian readers still have access to the RFE/RL newsletter A Week in Russia, for example, because email is unrestricted. On Wednesday, the BBC announced that it would use shortwave radio, a technology used during the Cold War, for a four-hour daily news broadcast in Ukraine and parts of Russia.
The story continues under the ad
The blockade of Western media comes amid tightening restrictions: Russia has shut down many of its own independent media outlets, including Ekho Moskvy, TV Rain, and Meduza. Some journalists fled the country.
CNN announced on Friday that it has stopped broadcasting its programs in Russia. CBS and ABC have said they will no longer air their Russian correspondents. And the BBC announced that it was temporarily suspending the work of its journalists in Russia. “We are not prepared to put them at risk of prosecution just for doing their job,” the statement said.
In this regard, a spokeswoman for The Washington Post said that the publication will remove some signatures and dates from some articles to “help protect our Moscow journalists,” while the organization seeks “clarity on whether Russia’s new restrictions will apply.” to international news organizations.
The story continues under the ad
Radio Liberty, which operates in 23 countries, has a history of reporting in tightly controlled media and has conducted digital literacy campaigns in several countries. An RFE/RL staff member, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on behalf of the organization, told The Post that the organization showed people in Afghanistan how to wipe their phones if they were stopped at Taliban checkpoints and taught Ukrainians how to use VPN.
In Russia, Radio Liberty has created many mechanisms to circumvent censorship. Its mobile app has circumvention tools built into it, and the organization has created so-called mirror websites that reproduce everything on the official homepage. If the state blocks one mirror site, it is easy to create another one. “It’s like a game of cat and mouse,” the employee said. “But we’re just a very, very fast mouse.”
Paul Farhi contributed to this report.