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[Music]
while we are at Congress we have
Enterprise class routers we have our
Enterprise management interface and we
have our Enterprise traffic uh the chier
has experienced a much more complicated
architecture rework at the past years
sior will show us what changed and will
update us on the very last state of the
information freedom on crier please
welcome
[Applause]
[Music]
Senor hello a lot of
humans so I will present you this uh
research that I was doing for last year
uh I was based at citizen lab which is a
very interesting Research Center based
in Toronto uh we are interesting because
we are interdisciplinary and I'm coming
from the perspective of soft science but
I'm heading towards heart science and
I'm curious about exploring especially
the hardest of the heart is the
underwater cables I'm passionate about
infrastructure and I will tell you how
in the case of Crimea this is important
to understand what exactly uh was
happening after the annexation on the
very very deep level of routing of
agreements between providers of uh
transfer uh Transit and peering
agreements and how this matters for the
end user and for the
isps so let's start with this uh
picture it's like before and after
Classic uh in this case we see on the
left um 2014 a lake that is not the lake
where you can swim you cannot swim in
this Lake I wouldn't recommend you it's
a lake for technical uh purposes that
treats sulfuric acid so this sulfuric
acid is used in production in a very big
Factory that is called Titan and this
Factory is located on the north of
Crimea so near the border now border
with Ukraine so this Lake was used uh to
Tre uh the waste from the factory but
after the annexation Ukraine stopped
providing this clear fresh water to
Crimea as part of its reaction to What
happened after the annexation Crimea was
dependent on 85% on Ukraine for fresh
water so in four years this Lake dried
out and what we see now on the right is
the same Lake but four years after and
this resulted in a catastrophe in
September 2018 uh people had to evacuate
kids from these surrounding areas and
they lost their Harvest and a lot of um
equipment was rusted everything was
destroyed in terms of like plants and
animals were
suffering who is guilty that's not the
question uh Ukraine did a very
interesting decision um
Russia did even more interesting
decision in 2014 but my talk here is not
happening on this level I want to
question the role of infrastructure in
this big political process and how
exactly Ukraine and Russia were dealing
with this question of annexation on the
Deep level of infrastructure if you look
at dependencies of Crimea on Ukraine it
was dependent on Ukraine in gas water
electricity and especially at the
Telecommunications that will be
interesting for us here so you have
those two cables that connect Ukraine to
Crimea and these cables are not
operating
anymore and you will see the the
dramatic history of how this
disconnection of Crimea happened
progressively and what it means for the
end users and the providers so in order
to do this research I actually used uh
some exper experiments I did a lot of
experiments uh I used mixed methods
first of all I'm a sociologist of
Technology by training so I was
interested in meeting internet service
providers who work in cria still now
after the anation I also interviewed
those who left Crimea for various
reasons economic political I interviewed
big associations like internet
Association of Ukraine that defend the
rights of providers but also in uh
interviewed software Engineers working
in Crimea or who left Crimea journalists
NGO
workers besides I had to use some
Network measurements to see what is
really happening on the network and for
that I used uniprobe some people who
work with uni or used to work with uni
are in this room and I thank these
humans for doing this project project
because it's really useful what uniprop
does it lets users in different regions
test a list of websites to see if it's
blocked and if it is then how it is
blocked this tool helps me to see how
censorship is applied in cria and also
to establish the list of autonomous
systems that really function in Crea
because it's a disputed area it's hard
to understand who is really providing
service there uh so you need to use
mixed methods to understand who are the
real isps in Gia and and also I wanted
to analyze bgb data over time and it was
hard and I will tell you why I think
this is the core of my talk why so hard
to analyze bgb Doon and sorry the last
moment the webography the forums the
forums are the great source of
information for this kind of research
because you see how end user is
complaining about providers not working
internet being very slow Gamers were the
first tours for
me world of 10 players were the first
who started complaining about loss of
speed and the Ping becoming crazy and
all these small signals made me think
something is happening so forums are
interesting to start the research with
so now to the core after this
introduction to the core of the topic
how the traffic Evolution happened in
Crimea I call it a soft soft
substitution model because the usage of
weapon and physical force was not that
important in Crimea as compared to the
eastern Ukraine where I also interviewed
operators who were working in donet for
example who told stories about how guys
with guns came to the office took the
equipment took everything and said now
it's our ISP we are running it and you
go away in Crimea it was different it
was very slow Progressive there was one
year of transition period when the
internet service providers who were
Ukrainian had to become Russian what
does it mean I will tell you later but
look at these dates it's very
interesting these four key dates on the
24th of March Med announces his desire
to build a new cable that would go under
the Black Sea and connect Crimea to
Russia to provide Russian traffic to
Crimea the cable was built in one month
and it was 46 km long so quick very fast
operation maybe something has been there
before already but we don't know I don't
have proof and I don't want to
speculate 5 days after six day uh 5 days
after yeah on May 4th Ross Telecom
announces the creation of a new operator
that is called Miranda media and owns
the big stake in this company so
basically it's a new brand under which
Ros Telecom operates in Crimea Ros
Telecom cannot operate under the real
name because of sanctions it will fall
under European and American sanctions
and will lose agreements with
International partners and have heavy
consequences and four month it took four
month for providers to actually start
receiving connections over this catch
trade cable so Miranda media first
appeared in the routing table only in
July 2014 it's interesting why it took
so so long I had uh various uh
hypothesis and uh I will tell
you the one that seems to work in the
meantime there were some other measures
that were taken by Russian government so
first of all they relocated frequencies
and the relocation of frequencies is
managed by the state radio frequency
commission it's a government institution
they started with allocating CDMA
frequencies and this is uh due to the
technology that is popular in post
Soviet Union they prefer CDMA for some
reason and the operator that was using
it was one of the biggest operators in
Ukraine called people net so people net
was providing uh mobile phone um
Internet and mobile U communication or
using 800 megaherz but this frequency
was allocated to military almost
immediately after the annexation started
so people net had to leave the Crimea
also this process of creating new brands
uh was very popular uh as a tactic of
sof substitution so they would create
new brands under new name and register
them in the neighboring country
neighboring regions like kodar so
officially the provider will not be
registered in Crimea but will be
registered in kodar and thus it will
avoid sanctions again so this is one of
the T tactics used for the soft
substitution and finally very quickly uh
on May 9 whole cable uh Communication
cable infrastructure was bought from
Ukraine uh to Russia so now Ros telicom
owns this uh 2,000 kilometers of traffic
uh well it doesn't own officially
because it's Miranda media and K Telecom
that off that own it but you know that
in practice is Ros Telecom behind it so
I call this process this this period
between the annexation in 2017 the
routing internum why because both
countries were still dividing still
disputing around the traffic which
traffic do people get Russian or
Ukrainian what does it mean to get
Ukrainian traffic what does it mean to
get Russian traffic and actually it took
3 years for Crimea to disconnect from
Ukraine why some people would say it's
patriotic Ukrainian providers didn't
want to become Russian I would not use
any political hypothesis here but I
would say that there is certainly one
reason that is very pragmatic I analyzed
discussions on various channels and
professional chats of internet service
providers what is interesting maybe for
you to know is there are a lot of of
connections still between Ukrainian and
Russian IP they are still chatting a lot
especially about the censorship because
censorship was to be applied in Ukraine
but now it's frozen this law so there is
a lot of discussion a lot of connection
between these communities and reading
these charts I saw that actually first
reason was pragmatic it was much more
expensive for them to plug to Russia
under the water and uh they would lose
in speed and quality and this we see
from on the on this graph on the right
it they they would lose up to 50
milliseconds which is a lot for World of
ttimes
for for high frequency trading for
everyone who is streaming and this is
important because other source of
information for me was the Civ Civic
media Civic journalists who would film
for example manifestations or Court
hearings or any other action in real
time and they would complain that they
cannot stream uh as as good as they used
to
some quotes from very respected people
some of them work in renc for the
Eastern Europe region some others are
exian providers so they explained that
actually this catch straight cable was
built anyhow tap up uh in a hurry very
very fast and uh another provider says
well the reason for this fast operation
is that they first of all used it for
military purpose for voice communication
and not for commercial communication the
cable was not powerful enough to give
enough traffic for civil
population and this uh routing internum
actually uh was lasted for three years
and the first important event that I
wanted to show you here and that showed
how strongly How Deeply Crimean internet
was dependent on Ukrainian path was this
operation that was conducted by a group
of pro-ukrainian activists when they EXP
exploded the power line connecting north
of uh Crimea and Ukraine for a month
Crimea was in the dark or more or less
black outed with a lot of disruptions
and shutdowns the traffic was not uh
present everywhere different operators
suffered in a different way from this
and we saw that analyzing various
operators that some of them were almost
100% dependent on Ukrainian traffic and
the consequences of that were that they
actually decided maybe it's a good idea
to buy some from Russia as well because
if Ukraine continues to cut us down like
that then we have to have a backup so if
you look at the graph that I will show
you later where you see how they unplug
from Ukraine and plug to Russia that was
one of the events that made Ukrainian
providers go for opt for Russian path as
well as a backup
so in a weird way this patriotic action
from Ukrainian activists conducted to
actually more Russian traffic in in
Crimea in a paradoxical way and after
that of course Russian government took a
decision to build the bridge that is
called car bridge that is providing
Crimean electricity also connecting it
uh giving a possibility not to use the
ships but also cars and stuff like that
and this bridge also has a second
cable that connects Crimea to
Russia so this gift briefly presents the
story of
replugging first you see Ukrainian
traffic then in March
2014 the idea to build a Russian cable
under the sea and then it
progressively the plan is realized and
the traffic is mixed for a
while both Ukrainian and
Russian but then after this uh operation
this
actions that showed how dependent Crimea
was on Ukrainian traffic a decision to
build a second cable appears and finally
all Crimea becomes Russian the traffic
in Crimea becomes Russian that's
official we don't know for real if there
is still Ukrainian traffic happening and
I think that there is but I have no
proof for that only some rumor and I
will never never tell you who and why
told me this
because these brave people who still
connect Crimea to Ukraine for some
reasons maybe patriotic maybe pragmatic
will be criminals both for Russian and
Ukrainian
government they're doing it on their
own so my research question after all
this was how did these isps position
themselves as Russian or Ukrainian how
did they transition and how can I get
this data how it was for me a big puzzle
there are around 3,9 SPS in in Ukraine
according to the license uh who have uh
who has the license to operate as a as a
service pro internet service provider
and I count after a long long long time
of work 114 in Crimea um I must precise
that actually 114 autonomous systems and
not internet service providers it means
that for example some universities that
also are autonomous systems are in this
list where did I get this data mixed
methods again onlyi I had a group of
people who bravely in very risky
situation condition were running tests
in Crimea I didn't know the name of
these people and I will never know them
and I don't want to know them these
people were communicating the uh numbers
of autonomous systems that they saw on
their uh test results then I was
checking in ripe Atlas what was this
what was available there which probes
are installed in Kian still running then
I was looking at downstreams of this big
operator Miranda media that already told
you yes about uh and then I was looking
at forums with three points exclamation
marks it's very important forums forums
forums you see an autonomo system you
look at the Forum for the name of the
ISP you read how bad the quality of
connection is how bad the technical
service is this is a real one it's
really in so I built this list
progressively and then um I collaborated
with brave humans from Ripe NCC and uh
Internet Health Report project and we
built
this beautiful
timeline that shows the transition of uh
providers from Ukraine to Russia or vice
versa so in red you see Russia in blue
Ukraine and gray is other other it means
that the provider is registered
officially in some other country would
it be Czech Republic for example or I
even saw Armenia and so on sometimes
this is real really happening because of
bureaucratic administrative reasons
because the provider is registered as
cheze cze for example example sometimes
it's a way to aade avoid sanctions again
so it's a trick
to show you animate animation uh
animated version of this maybe it will
uh be easy for understanding than this
uh graph so each dot will represent an
ISP within cran and uh what I learned by
talking to ripe NCC people is that there
is a procedure that you need to comp
comply uh in order to actually change
your attribution as being Ukrainian or
Russian so if providers stay Ukrainian
it doesn't necessarily mean that they
are patriotic or Pro Ukrainian it may
just mean that they didn't want to take
extra steps to fill extra papers and
things like that but those who changed
to Russian there we can have some
speculation about maybe they wanted to
show loyalty maybe they wanted to comply
maybe they were forced to comply so no
political consequences to conclusions on
this
data yet because it needs to be again
and again iterated with interviews with
qualitative so that's where the
sociology can finally be useful to check
if this or that person may have some
extra technical reasons to stay
Ukrainian or become Russian and so
on interesting about this Dynamic is
that they suddenly start becoming
Russian after
2017 up and now you will see Russia will
start winning so winning
why um there are hypothesis one of which
is this opening of the second Cable in
July
2017 when uh providers had a chance to
have more traffic going there and it
became cheaper to to connect to
Russia but not all the providers were
happy and there was some resistance in
providers uh circles some of this
resistance were was happening through
very fun practices like this one
so I was manually looking through who is
uh information about every autonomous
system that I found and this nice joke
Vladimir Putin as a contact person for
this provider I had to anonymize but
unfortunately I should maybe have
anonymized the city also but now it's
too
late and now I come to the second part
of my presentation which will be a bit
of complaining and maybe giving some
ideas about what to do in the future for
those of you who are interested in this
kind of
data I must say that it was very
interesting to do this research because
there is no perfect tool to analyze
historical bgp data it's hard what I was
doing first maybe some recognize where
it comes from it's a very nice uh
Hurrican electrics tool bgp
he.net I was going with every as number
to check this manually how this
autonomous system is connected to
another one that is bigger and how this
is connecting connected finally to Tire
one in the
end manually uh 10 15 20 and then I
stopped because I thought maybe there is
a bot a script someone something that
can help me to do this without me
becoming crazy but there was something
very useful in this method because every
time I was checking this second and
especially the third hop the H that
happens before the the route propagation
becomes very
beated that was pointing all the time to
the same player all the time I saw
Miranda media Miranda media Miranda okay
there should be some process of
centralization going here it's not
normal that there is just one player all
the time that is connecting the whole
territory to the outside internet then I
found this other as down there that is
called umlc and I thought hm this player
is also very frequent but less than the
the first one maybe this is a new one
that is kind of sharing the market so I
had some hypothesis I presented this on
one conference and I found people who
helped
me so that was a long story of
collaboration with different humans some
of them are in this room first we looked
at kaida that is a great project and
they have this bgp reader that you can
use but you need to take data from
another project that is called root
views that is also a very good one made
by University of Oregon the problem is
that the data is super heavy so you have
snapshots of the whole inter
internet every two hours when it's Z you
see that how heavy it is so it becomes
like
4.5 gigabyte after it has been unzipped
and transformed into a file the file can
be read by a human I more or less can
read some parts of it and understand but
not enough to do a quick sociological
analysis of that so in the end I was you
know about to invent the tool myself but
I didn't have enough knowledge and
enough experience and I finally met
these people from Internet Health Report
who invented this new notion that I find
very interesting the autonomous system
hemony index so what does it mean this
autonomous system hemony is how Central
a certain autonomous system is for a
region or for a how many downstreams it
has and if these downstreams have only
one route through this Upstream this
Upstream is hon uh is hegemonic so you
can check this paper it's a small uh
proceeding paper three pages a poster
and I think you will be very interested
that's what we did after long work this
is actually the history of autonomous
system had Germany in Gia that is
associated to some events
that you may not know but I know and I
will give you some hints so there are
about four or five major events on this
graph maybe some of you already guessed
2014 meid 2014 July that moment when
Miranda media appears on the routing
table and starts providing Russian
traffic the cage cable is built the
connection starts flowing the traffic
starts flowing in Crimea beam we see
Ross Telecom and Miranda media appearing
on the graph not as Hons but already
quite present and then you will see some
interesting political moments like in
2015 there was this attack on the
networks where uh I I showed you the
power grid we also see Ukrainian
operators uh losing their hermany
Russian operators gaining more in
hermany and another interesting moment
this opening of the second Cable in the
mid 2017 where rosom strikes as red it
provides uh uh a lot a lot of traffic
and actually uh start occupying uh for
for a while the the downstreams and also
you see appearing this F and umlc that I
told you about I interpret is uh this as
the understanding of of Russian uh maybe
it's roselo maybe it's the government
that they didn't have enough resources
to actually provide whole traffic to
Crimea they had to let other players in
and the let FJ and they let umlc in but
these are only hypothesis we are still
working on interpreting this graph uh we
need to write a correct plot there are a
lot of things happening here also if you
look at the Ukrainian ones that are very
present in the beginning but there is
one you see one to 34 from the top W un
net this W un net appears only after the
annexation it's a Ukrainian provider and
suddenly it only appears after the
annexation
why uh some sociology was done by me to
understand what happened there and
actually this provider had weird
connections with some Russian
governmental services that may actually
have been using this provider for
special reasons and that's why
disappears in 2017 in the middle because
ESB Ukrainian uh political police
searches five companies including wet
and searches and per takes away all the
equipment from them and stops actually
their operations in in Crimea so wet was
one of
those one funny fact I was analyzing
again manually the who is and I found
one operator that is still in Crimea
that in its contact information has at
W.A they didn't uh think of correcting
it then I checked somehow and I it seems
the W unet people are still present
there under a new name under a new brand
name so there was this traffic War and
the end of internum around 2017 when ASO
was searching as I said providers and
accusing them of actually collaborating
with occupied territories and another
event that I find very important on the
31st of May Crimean citizens start
seeing Ukrainian blog pages when they
try to access vk.com or yandex.ru that
is due to the decision of the president
of Ukraine to block these Russian
services and a lot of complaints from
Crimean users why do I see this Blog
Page according to decision of Ukrainian
president you cannot go are we
ukrainians we I thought we were Russians
there was a confusion there was a big
media attention to the traffic to the
source of traffic first time the media
started writing about where does the
traffic come from was after this event
after this blocking of
vka so that's when the decision was
taken by Ukrainian government or by
something else to stop providing traffic
to Crimea and it's weirdly coinciding
with this uh launching of the of the
second cable interesting huh so to to
come to my conclusions because I want to
talk to you and to hear your questions
what are the consequences of this inter
rnum of this operation of progressive
transformation of traffic in Crimea
first for the it
market so due to the as I mentioned it
became very hard for Crimean it experts
and developers and providers to work
there so the market actually lost about
30% of internet service providers
according to qualitative data we need to
find sources that we can actually cross
with to see if it's really correct but
interviews show that that's more or less
what we lose there was a huge wave of
migration of it experts from uh Crimea
to the mainland of Ukraine and the
crisis of jobs in it sector no
International operators or it uh
companies are openly operating uh in
Crimea due to sanctions and there there
is a big gray Market of internet service
providers that is developing including
collaborations with the eastern Ukraine
that is very interesting there are
providers who have their office in
lugansk for
example and the last last Point roaming
humans who live in Crimea and want to
use mobile internet they find themselves
using
roaming I'm all already in the end so
what are the consequences of uh this
annexation for internet service
providers First of all they have to
comply with the Russian law they have to
install some equipment and this
equipment is very expensive first they
have to install sorm according to the
new law that's called yava law they have
to store the traffic for 30 days and the
meod data for 6 months or 3 years I'm
sorry and for telephone uh companies
they have to store all the traffic for 6
months a lot a lot it's very expensive
you see the price huh then they also
have
to apply censorship and there is a weird
censorship practices in Crimea that they
block a certain black list that is not
the official Black List in Russia they
block something else according to the
decision of local governments of
Municipal administrations and that I
found out by inter interviewing these
internet service providers that still
work in Crimea so they have to block
certain websites especially Crimean
Tatar media Crimean and Tatar are the
indigenous people of Crimea and they
have their own media the the most
censored in Crimea Ukrainian liberal
media Russian opposition
media for the end users they lose in
speed and quality their internet service
becomes more expensive at least 10% but
this concerns all Russia there will be a
big big rise in cost of internet service
because of this equipment because of
this laws because of this way of
Internet governance and we will have
some talks uh in the following days uh
by Leon dakov who is present in this
room for example who will talk more
about this various equipment that is
imposed to providers in Russia and how
the the it is it has some consequences
for the
industry also there is a reverse
censorship on the right you see slug
that decided not to provide service to
Crimean clients because of the sanctions
people cannot access to Google play they
cannot access to Amazon Airbnb Microsoft
the problem is for the activists for the
Civic Society for the journalists that
they cannot update their computer
sometimes they have problems with
uploading signal tour or other nice
tools that we like because they don't
know how to use fdroid they have to use
Google Play but they cannot so I end
here because I want let to let you ask
questions and discuss a bit and uh some
acknowledgements for people who helped
me and this Internet Health Report
citizen lab and other great humans from
various countries in the world
unfortunately I cannot name them they
risk things so that's all and maybe you
have things to ask me or to tell thank
[Applause]
[Music]
you thank you thank you very much
sor
if you have any questions please go to
microphone number one or microphone
number two and speak out
loud and of course from the
internet no question so
far yeah there we
have so yeah um the good it people from
Kia did they mostly went to the Ukraine
or to
Russia uh we need to decide what's good
and bad first um the majority of those
who I know or interviewed moved to
Mainland of
Ukraine uh KF Le or to Europe Western
Europe or to us depends on how lucky
they were I don't know that many who
moved to Russia actually but I I I'm
sure they exist I just don't have any
data on them okay
microphone number one
please uh hello hi uh I was kind of
curious about something there's been
numerous reports ever since 2014 of
cyber attacks toward Ukraine I was
wondering if there has been uh if you
have ever ever heard of sabotage against
Ukrainian isps for instance or against
uh Russian isps working in Ukraine
could you repeat your question I was
wondering if you have ever if there had
ever been a reports through your
different channels of sabotage attacks
against Ukrainian yps for instance maybe
trying to discourage them from working
uh again or trying to make other other
come in so the question was about uh
whether Ukrainian isps were ever uh
subject to cyber attacks yeah uh so far
I didn't hear that I heard about various
fishing attacks on activists and
journalists but not against Ukrainian IP
so far I know there are very interesting
patriotic hacking groups that operate
both in Ukraine and in Russia one of
those has even its own telegram Channel
where you can go and look at their
exploits download and use them it's a
public Channel you can go and check what
they do they do a lot of cyber attacks
against for example the donet People's
Republic so-called and lugansk
territories and when they bring down the
websites they can haug into some
databases and leak the data about the
people who run this republics so this
kind of uh hacking uh patriotic hacking
exists but so far I didn't see any
attacks against internet service
providers as such in
Crimea okay thank you thanks uh
microphone number two please hello he um
this is quite concise but I I'm trying
to put it together this one question is
about uh clarification on um the the
ultimate demise of inter Ukrainian
Crimean links if I understood it right
you said it really came from Ukraine or
actions either by Ukrainian authorities
or other groups acting with or without
collusion with the state
and and another question is that um
given that I I'm I'm new to
understanding the region but I
understand that people across Ukraine
and certainly in Crimea um are not
uh you can find a preference in terms of
language some people feel more closer to
Russian speaking others to Ukrainian but
I did notice that a lot of Ukrainian
websites tend to not support the Russian
language and so I was wondering if
there's data on um because because
you're basically giving the impression
that the service is worse but if people
are using more Russian websites Russian
hosted websites would it not be better
for them to be directly connected to
Russia than have been going through
Ukrainian routes thanks thank you so the
first question was whether the decisions
were coming from Ukrainian government or
am I sure about that basically if I
understood you right um did I I hope huh
more or less um
this is one of the central doubts in all
research for me why did someone stop
providing traffic from Ukraine to Crimea
why would you stop providing your people
with internet that is not subject to
tapping or filtering by the government
of the country with which you are at War
for me this is an interesting question
and there can be some economic reasons
there can be some agreements there can
be political uh showing that look how
you're dependent on us as they did with
a clean water before but I don't want to
speculate on that now at this early
stage because I have some weird feeling
that why did it coincident like this
with the opening of the second cable
beam 12 Days After no Ukrainian traffic
is it Ukraine that decided it so it's
it's a bit weird I don't want to get in
this soil because it's moving it's can
you know just I can disappear in in this
swamp of of speculations but but the
question is here I have no certainty
about who did this decision and the
second one was about uh Russian language
uh sites being more popular among
Crimean citizens and is isn't it good
for them to have then Russian
traffic I think that this is another
kind of research I didn't look at the
appli
layer I looked at the more at the
infrastructure layer and a bit on the
censorship I need to use some other kind
of data for example maybe look at Google
search maybe look at statistics of what
people what websites people were
visiting before and after but I know
from the reports of NGS that document
these kinds of information and the free
speech and the expression online that
indeed there was a shift towards more
Russian speaking content now in Crimea
from Ukrainian content is it a a
consquence of propaganda maybe I don't
know uh anyway nothing would stop them
from going to Ukrainian websites with uh
or Russian speaking websites with
Ukrainian traffic there was not no
censorship so far uh administratively
applied in Ukraine before the war and
actually Ukraine didn't have a black
list that would be then delivered to
providers that as in Russia so the
internet was more or less uncensored
until 2017 and until this decision to
block VK uh and Yandex as a response of
in within the information War to Russian
censorship of Ukrainian media so I guess
Crimean citizens would also could have
also used Ukrainian traffic to get to
Russian language websites it's another
kind of data I don't have
it thank you uh the second person on
microphone number two because I think
you were already asked you already asked
a
question I got another question yeah but
the person be behind you uh didn't ask a
question
oh sorry for being
rude uh first um absolutely fascinating
uh research thank you so much for
putting uh transparency on this um I
noticed that you uh did a lot of
analysis on uh undee cables and I'm not
even sure if it's possible to uh analyze
uh this uh question I'm about to ask but
what about satellite
providers thank
you this is something I have close to my
heart last year the Congress person
approached me and asked what about
satellites that could be a solution for
cians for cran activists at least and
indeed there has been some discussion
that I had some with some humans
from connect to satellite providers say
about maybe we can try alternative
infrastructure alternative uh sources of
Internet alternative networks especially
for the cran Tatar cran Tatar live in
villages in the mountains so it's very
interesting for them to have this kind
of uh traffic uh from satellite internet
I don't know how many of them have uh
exactly how many of them have this
traffic but it's very popular already
because of the TV they use satellite for
TV and now they use also um yeah uh TV
over IP or whatever it's called I don't
watch TV but yeah there is the
infrastructure needed for deploying an
alternative source of Internet with
satellites the ministry of
communications of Ukraine has thought of
that and this is in the strategy of
development for Crimea but so far it
hasn't been really applied on the on the
big Lev level maybe one one day let's
see but it's a good good question and I
also think of mesh and I also think of
whatever cgns and I also think of of any
kind of alternative uh networks for for
these people maybe they don't need it
did that's another
question and the last question I think
from the
interwebs hi the internet has a
follow-up question to the satellite link
which is what about radio links
H yeah the radio is very interesting and
indeed uh this was one of the first
projects that Ukrainian Ministry of
communications um realized they opened a
radio tower that now is covering at
least North part of Crimea with
Ukrainian uh radio
content sometimes you can hear it from
the South but it's not really properly
covering anything uh so there is
development in this uh in this sense uh
as for using radio as uh replacement for
connectivity for providing traffic for
humans in cria I haven't heard of these
projects we need people who want to go
there explore this and maybe build
alternative networks the problem is that
if you want to go there you know you
need to go through the very heavy
bureaucratic procedure ask a permission
from Ukrainian government so you become
transparent and when you enter the
checkpoint they have your data it's
impossible to enter from R from Russian
territory without falling in the risk of
being sanctioned by Ukraine this is
something that they didn't mention here
because it's not about technology it's
about geopolitics and legal Arrangements
sanctions and all these weird ways of
governing people that I think are not
going
in the right direction they are not
helping us to break the wall they're
building this wall and they making it's
very hard for people like me or like
other researchers or journalists or
human rights Defenders or hackers who
want to go to cria they cannot go
anonymously they have to declare
themselves this is something that I
would like to see changing I would like
to have a possibility for us to go there
in order to make something to actually
de deex the Mind
first that's it
and with this final words we close this
talk have a very warm Applause for
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