The Kremlin internet plot

Russian internet users fear that the Kremlin is trying to establish a separate web for Russia making it easier for the authorities to control access and monitor users. But has the Kremlin left it too late?

According to the international domain agency ICANN, the aim is to start up a cyrillic web - the alphabet used in Russian and other languages of the former Soviet Union - separate to the rest of the worldwide web. ICANN reports that Russia is seeking a new domain name - '.rf' in the Russian alphabet or '.pΦ' in cyrillic - in addition to its current Roman alphabet one, '.ru'. This request echoes recent Chinese trials to establish Chinese-character domains in order to restrict and monitor internet users' surfing habits.

Wolfgang Kleinwachter, special adviser to the chairman of the Internet Governance Forum, said last week that in the worst case scenario the Kremlin might then monitor anyone in the country who accesses the non-Russian global web.

A cyrillic web could see Russia increasingly isolated.  "Russians estimate that 90 per cent of the communication will be within Russia and just 10 per cent will go outside," said Kleinwachter of the cyrillic web.

If it is Russia's intention to go cyrillic in order to monitor users, then the move directly contradicts a supposedly reassuring statement made by Putin's liberal press adviser Dmitry Peskov, who claimed last year that Western reports on state control were "ludicrous" because Russia's 25 million internet users were free to acccess "whatever content they wished".

However, the Russian move might be too late. Technology experts are working on a "bridge" between all languages which would make it impossible for any system to exist separately.

This would democratise the whole internet, says The First Post's internet specialist Linton Chiswick: "While it's easy to be suspicious about Moscow's motives, Russian internet users definitely have a justifiable complaint with the way the internet is structured. Cyrillic keyboards already make accessing Western websites harder than it should be."

This is the problem. The majority of the Roman alphabet web is based in the US. A compromise has yet to be found which would mean users of other languages can have their own domain names, ideally registered and administered in their own countries, and access all other domains - without state interference.

Linton Chiswick says: "ICANN - the body that oversees domain names - is already pressing forward with internationalised domain name trials that should eventually remedy the situation. But I can imagine that ICANN's historical links to the US Government might not endear it to the Kremlin."

In Moscow, the push for a cyrillic web is seen by some as yet another sign that the authoritarian tendency is gaining ground ahead of March's presidential elections. ·