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As the Internet use in Russia increases spectacularly, having tripled in the last three years, Putin' governance concentrates its efforts on getting control over the Russian Internet after having already gained much control over the traditional mass media.

Putin's allies and supporters have created blogs and news sources to flood the Internet with messages favourable to the present political power.

During a national broadcast live on TV and Radio in October 2007, Putin tackled the issue of Internet censorship. "Naturally, in this sphere, as in other spheres, we should be thinking about adhering to Russian laws, about making sure that child pornography is not distributed, that financial crimes are not committed" said Putin.

Besides numerous pro-government blogs, several already established online outlets have been bought by Putin's allies with the purpose to create a network to disseminat propaganda and to control the online information. Such a publication is Gazeta.ru, the most respected online newspaper which was sold in December to a metals magnate loyal to Putin. Russian officials have also been looking for the possibility of establishing a separate Internet within Russia that would serve their purposes.

The reaction of the Kremlin power comes to counterpart situation as the one having occurred in 2004 when, due to concentrated efforts of uncensored blogs and on-line publications, a popular uprising in Ukraine provoked the revoking of the vote for a pro-Moscow candidate in the presidential elections.

In April 2007, when an opposition movement held a march in Moscow, blogger Pavel Danilin, a Putin supporter, together with his team, started blogging about a smaller pro-Kremlin march being held the same day. They blogged so much, and linked to each other so effectively, that they crowded out all the items about the opposition march from the very influential top-five blog post listing on the Yandex Web portal.

Prosecutors have also started focussing on Internet chat sites, blogs and postings in order to charge the users that criticize Putin or other officials. However, the federal officials deny any campaign to control the Internet. "Personally, I am against developing and adopting a special law that would regulate the Internet," declared Leonid Reiman, Minister of IT&C. "The Internet has been always developing as a free medium, and it should remain as such" he added.

Despite the officials' statements, in July 2007, Putin already announced his plans to create a global information technology powerhouse network, a statement that was interpreted by the mass media as an attempt from his part to establish a controlled network separated from the current Internet which is organised by ICANN. According to Wolfgang Kleinwaechter, special adviser to the chairmen of the Internet Governance Forum, some Russian officials are thinking of a separate Internet, with Cyrillic domain names, taking the example of China.

Kremlin Seeks To Extend Its Reach in Cyberspace (28.10.2007)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/27/AR2007...

Putin tightens his grip on Russia's internet (29.10.2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/29/putin_censors_internet/