Already, Moscow's censorship has drastically reduced independent news sources.

Many local and international media have ceased their activity.

Access to major social networks is difficult, unless you use a virtual private network (VPN).

Tech giants themselves, from Google to Sony, have responded to calls from the Ukrainian government to punish Russia, by suspending the sale of certain products or services in that country.

Ukraine would have liked to go even further: at the end of February, four days after the start of the Russian offensive, a ministry asked Icann, a global regulator responsible for assigning addresses on the internet, to take measures to cut off Russia's access to the web.

After a few days, the organization ended up rejecting it, arguing the need to remain neutral.

In response, some 40 researchers, defenders of digital freedoms and European elected officials, in particular, published an open letter.

They advocate targeted sanctions, targeting the army or propaganda agencies, which "minimize the risk of collateral damage", because "disproportionate or overly broad sanctions risk alienating populations".

The signatories also call for the creation of a "multilateral mechanism" which would be responsible for evaluating and implementing sanctions, to block access to Russian military websites for example.

"Winning Hearts and Minds"

Technically and politically, building a digital wall around Russia would have been complicated anyway.

Russia blocked access to Instagram which many Russians depended on for their social life and economic activity Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV AFP/Archives

"The network infrastructures are very meshed. If we want to prevent traffic from entering through the window, it enters through the cellar", explains Ronan David, general manager of the start-up Efficient IP, specialist in securing computer networks.

But above all, "it seems counterproductive in terms of efforts to spread democratic messages and win hearts and minds", underlines Peter Micek, legal director at Access Now, an NGO which campaigns for the digital rights of all.

After the invasion of Ukraine, the European Union banned the official Russian media, RT and Sputnik, from broadcasting from the European audiovisual landscape to social networks and even Google search results.

Russia responded by blocking the BBC and Facebook, as well as Instagram, an app that many Russian influencers and marketers depend on for their business.

Russian citizens are likely to find these sanctions "completely unfair" on the part of the West, notes Natalia Krapiva, a lawyer at Access Now.

Because on the basis of official Russian information, "people can believe that Russia is trying to help the Ukrainians and only targets military targets", she explains.

Arabica or chicory

This isolation could be reinforced over time, as alternatives are put in place, more easily controlled by the government, or even at its initiative.

A worker transports a grid on Red Square near the Kremlin - AFP

"The Russians are quite capable of building a national internet", but it would look "as much like the internet as chicory looks like arabica", estimates Pierre Bonis, director general of Afnic, the association which manages the ".fr" extension.

"We must not break the universality of the Internet, even if the Russians do unacceptable things," he insists.

China already has a largely separate internet, and other countries aspire to this model.

"Iran has spent the past decade building a National Information Network (NIN) as a viable alternative to the global internet," says Peter Micek.

According to him, the sanctions favor "the development of this even more censored national internet".

He regrets that many companies, "which do not have the time or the ability to understand the legal nuances" of the sanctions, go too far and simply withdraw from the country.

"Already, Upwork, one of the platforms we depend on to help civil society and support democratic actors in Russia, has stopped providing its services on the spot."

For the most determined Russians, there remains the use of VPNs, some of which have been banned in recent years in Russia: demand jumped 2.692% on March 14 compared to the week before the invasion of Ukraine, according to top10vpn.com.

© 2022 AFP