Kremlin steps up internet censorship

Evgeny Kostrov

On July 22, the State Duma (the lower house of the Russian parliament) passed (306 votes to 67) in its third reading a law imposing fines for searching the internet for what the Kremlin classifies as “extremist material” and advertising VPN services. Virtual private networks (VPN) hide users’ IP and thus enable people to access sites and apps that are otherwise banned. Many sites and encrypted messaging services in Russia, such as Signal, are no longer accessible without VPNs.

The bill is expected to be signed into law by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The bill means that if a user “deliberately” searches for “extremist material,” they face administrative liability with all possible fines. The list of “extremist materials” includes neo-Nazi and radical Islamist literature, as well as literature by figures associated with the NATO-backed liberal opposition and generally critical of the war. The list, which has been significantly expanded in recent years, now includes more than 5,500 items.

Based on the bill, law enforcement agencies must prove that the user is doing this intentionally and did not come across the material by accident. This raises questions: How will the Russian secret service, the FSB, and the police “obtain evidence”? How will users be able to remember all 5,500 prohibited materials, the list of which is constantly being arbitrarily expanded and now includes many materials critical of the war in Ukraine?

The new law allows for increased pressure on anyone who does not “cooperate” with the authorities in providing information about users of VPN services and internet providers. Telecommunications operators, internet providers, and VPN service administrators will be required not to disclose information about their interactions with the state, otherwise they will face fines of millions of dollars.

For ordinary users, this means virtually no privacy in their online lives. Moreover, the constant updating of the list of extremist materials makes it possible to ban content that has long been publicly available and widely popular. In effect, this means virtually unlimited possibilities for restricting what remains of internet freedom in Russia.

Before the third reading, State Duma Deputy Speaker and leader of the New People party Vladislav Davankov conducted a poll on his Telegram channel about the new law. Seventy-five percent of participants voted against the law. A total of 430,000 people voted, which is impressive given that the poll was created just one day before the State Duma session. The results of the vote and Davankov's speech against the law did not convince Putin's party (United Russia) to reject the law. In the end, the misnamed “people's deputies” passed the reactionary law, clearly opposing themselves to the majority of the population.

The adoption of this extremely unpopular new law comes amid an increasingly fierce proxy war against NATO in Ukraine and economic stagnation in the country. Under conditions of growing social discontent and opposition to the war, it marks another step by Putin's regime to increase censorship and deprive them of all opportunities to obtain alternative information in the future.

The tightening of internet censorship in Russia has a long history. Back in 2012, a law on “blacklists” was passed, which created a register of websites that violate Russian law. In 2016, the Yarovaya laws were passed, requiring telecommunications operators and internet companies to store user metadata for three years. This metadata must be handed over to the authorities upon request, without a court order.

In effect, all these laws have allowed the authorities to begin building up their internet control apparatus. The general rehearsal for the use of the new technology took place in 2018, when a decision was made to ban the popular messaging app Telegram, due to its unwillingness to comply with the authorities. In the end, the censors had to back down, partly because of mass discontent and partly because of the imperfection of their own blocking technology.

In the years leading up to the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian state further improved its ability to block and monitor the internet. Just before the beginning of the war, the news agencies Meduza and Dozhd, which are both associated with the NATO-backed liberal opposition in the oligarchy, were blocked. Since the start of the war, Putin's regime has banned Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, Signal, Discord, and slowed down YouTube. Amazon Web Services, an important cloud service for the IT industry, was also blocked. Starting in 2023, the blocking of popular VPN services intensified, and laws related to VPNs began to be tightened.

Most recently, the popular internet speed tester SpeedTest was blocked. The bitter irony is that SpeedTest was blocked just after a series of obvious failures of the Russian internet. At one point, the internet disappeared or slowed down dramatically in almost every region of the country. According to Sboy.rf, in the first month of 2025 alone, there were at least 195,000 complaints about mobile internet outages. This compares to 431,000 complaints in all of 2024.

This graph shows the impact of internet shutdowns in Russia on July 16, 2025. The areas marked in red experienced a partial shutdown of of mobile and wired internet. The areas in yellow experienced a partial shutdown of wired internet and the areas in orange a partial shutdown of mobile internet. [Photo: Telegram channel "Na sviazi"]

The adoption of the new VPN law is only an intermediate step by the Putin regime to restrict the information space for the working class and the laboring masses. We must expect further intensification of censorship and attacks on the most basic democratic rights of the working class.

Most recently, the Kremlin has also floated a ban of WhatsApp, one of the few Western apps still available in Russia without a VPN. For many, it is an important means of communication, including with friends and family abroad.

It should be noted that the issue of internet censorship is not only one of basic democratic rights. It also has a major socioeconomic dimension. 

By blocking numerous messengers, services, applications, and websites that are important for coordinating production, design, and development, the Kremlin is worsening economic chaos in the country, which no “domestic means” of development can resolve. In fact, censorship leads to the further isolation and decay of the economic foundations of Russian capitalism, threatening huge social disasters for the Russian working class.

Moreover, the efforts to restrict the internet for ordinary users forces the Russian oligarchy to invest huge amounts of money and resources in strengthening internet censorship, which could be spent on healthcare and education — areas where the oligarchy has made major cuts. This poses the same fundamental question for Russian workers as the working class of every country today: the question of who controls the social and economic resources and who has state power.

As long as Russia is ruled by a class of billionaire gangsters who are living off the export of raw materials and profiting from the war in Ukraine, while seeking to strike a deal with imperialism, workers are confronted with an existential threat. Through its bankrupt policies, the oligarchy is, in fact, contributing in every way to the ruin of the country and the outbreak of a third world war.

Angola’s MPLA regime kills 22 anti-austerity protestors, arrests 1,200

Alejandro López

At least 22 people have been killed, hundreds injured, and more than 1,200 arrested in some of the largest protests Angola has seen since the end of its civil war in 2002.

The protests erupted in response to austerity measures imposed by the long-ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government at the behest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Police fire on protesters in Luanda, Angola (screenshot from video) [Photo: X/mozinforma]

The immediate trigger was the decision to cut fuel subsidies, raising diesel prices from 300 to 400 kwanzas ($0.33 to $0.44) per litre. This sent transport and food costs soaring in a country mired in poverty and inequality. In early July, small-scale protests began following the announcement. But the movement escalated into mass demonstrations on Monday when candongueiro drivers, who operate the blue and white minibus taxis that transport much of Angola’s working class, launched a three-day strike.

Tens of thousands joined the strike nationally. In Luanda’s Cazenga district, police shot at protestors and people storming shops to get food and supplies. Shops and businesses shut down as armed security forces patrolled the streets. Clashes were reported in Rocha Pinto and Prenda, while protests spread to Huambo, Lubango, and Benguela. In Lubango, a police officer shot and killed a 16-year-old who was part of a group attempting to enter MPLA offices.

“Why do you make us suffer like this? How will we feed our children? The prices have to go down,” one woman told TV Nzinga. “People are fed up. Hunger is everywhere, and the poor are becoming miserable,” another told the BBC. “The government ignores its people,” Luanda teacher Daniel Pedro told AFP. “They say youth are the future, yet today we are unemployed. I feel deeply insecure.”

Fuel subsidies have served as a lifeline in Angola, helping the population afford basic goods. But under IMF demands, the government is phasing them out. This follows subsidy cuts initiated in 2023 and April 2024, which raised gasoline prices by about 87 percent in June 2023 and diesel prices by 48 percent in April 2024. The Finance Ministry aims to eliminate all fuel subsidies by the end of 2025 to reduce the budget deficit and meet debt obligations, which stand at approximately $58 billion, accounting for 63 percent of the country’s GDP.

At a press briefing in March 2024, the IMF stated: “The removal of subsidies is very important to ensure fiscal consolidation.” The IMF cynically emphasised the critical need for “good strategic communication and mitigation measures aimed at the poorest sections of the population.”

Angola’s deepening crisis is rooted in the collapse of global oil prices since 2015 and declining domestic production. Although it remains sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest oil producer, the vast revenues generated have enriched only a narrow elite in the MPLA and their foreign backers. Over half the population lives below the poverty line, unemployment stands at nearly 30 percent, youth unemployment surpasses 50 percent in some areas, and inflation neared 20 percent in June. Public services are in ruins.

What began as a protest against subsidy withdrawals has now become an uprising against decades of social misery.

The massacre of demonstrators by the MPLA regime exposes the rotten character of bourgeois nationalism. Nearly 50 years ago, MPLA leader Agostinho Neto declared, “Concretely realizing the aspirations of the great masses of our people, the People’s Republic of Angola will, under the guidance of MPLA, gradually advance toward a people’s democratic state. With the alliance of the workers and the peasants as its nucleus, all patriotic sectors will be united against imperialism and its agents in the struggle for the construction of a society without exploiters and without exploited.”

That promise was made in the aftermath of a heroic 13-year guerrilla war against the fascist Portuguese dictatorship, which ended with the Carnation Revolution in April 1974. But soon after independence in 1975, Angola was plunged into a 27-year civil war, stoked by the US and South Africa, which backed the FNLA (National Front for the Liberation of Angola) and UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) to crush the Soviet Union/Cuban backed MPLA. Up to a million people died, and millions more were displaced.

Troops of the MPLA, the new rulers of Angola, arrive to take over positions around the Bay of Luanda which have been abandoned by Portuguese colonial troops earlier this day, November 10, 1975. [AP Photo/Horst Faas]

Following the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union, the MPLA—like its counterparts FRELIMO in Mozambique and the African National Congress in South Africa—abandoned any nominal reference to socialism, rebranding themselves as pro-business parties and imposing IMF market reforms, austerity and privatisations.

Today, Angola is being dragged into the maelstrom of imperialist war amid the new scramble for Africa. Angola has now become one of the most pro-US regimes on the continent. The United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) is deepening military cooperation with the MPLA regime under the guise of “preventative security assistance.”

In a statement during a recent visit to Angola and Namibia amid the anti-austerity protests, AFRICOM’s Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. John Brennan cited bogus claims of threats of ISIS/Islamic State in southern Africa and “emerging Mexican drug cartels” to justify expanded US-Angolan military exercises and maritime surveillance support. AFRICOM’s aim was to “keep Namibia and Angola free of those threats as well as to prepare them for any future threats” through training and equipment.

This amounts to the militarisation of Angola’s strategic coastline and its integration into the US’s global war machine, as Washington accelerates preparations for conflict with China.

Angola is a key component of the Lobito Corridor, which the previous Biden administration and now Trump have aggressively promoted as a counterweight to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The corridor links the copper and cobalt-rich Democratic Republic of Congo to the Atlantic Ocean via Angolan rail and port infrastructure. US officials openly describe how “security is leveraging economic development and vice versa.”

The military drill Obangame Express in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Guinea last May, that stretched from Cabo Verde to Angola, is one of three African regional “Express” military exercises organised by AFRICOM and facilitated by the US Sixth Fleet. They are being conducted alongside naval upgrades to protect these strategic trade routes, with AFRICOM helping Angola track and intercept vessels off its coast.

The plunder of Angola’s and Central Africa’s vast natural resources—oil, gas, copper, and rare earth minerals—is driven by the logic of war. The same imperialist powers enforcing IMF austerity, backing the genocide in Gaza, waging war against Russia in Ukraine, and preparing for conflict with China in the Pacific, are embedding their military forces across the African continent under the guise of “capacity-building.” They are transforming African territory, airspace, and infrastructure into a forward base for war, positioning for a confrontation between US imperialism and China.

China has played a central role in shaping Angola’s post-war economy. Since the early 2000s, Beijing has become Angola’s largest bilateral creditor, extending tens of billions of dollars in oil-backed loans to finance infrastructure projects—roads, railways, hospitals, and housing developments—constructed largely by Chinese state-owned firms. These deals, dubbed the “Angola Model,” tying credit to guaranteed oil exports have allowed the MPLA elite to maintain liquidity. But like other African regimes, Angola’s ruling elite is being forced to choose sides in an escalating conflict.

The masses in Angola have no allies in any faction of the Angolan bourgeoisie. A way forward is to be found in the rising struggles of workers and youth across Africa and the world.

The collapse of the old anti-colonial nationalist movements is accelerating across the continent.

In Namibia, SWAPO has seen its support collapse under the weight of mass unemployment, inequality, and corruption. In South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC), which has ruled since the fall of apartheid, lost its parliamentary majority last year for the first time in 30 years. In Botswana, the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), in power since independence in 1966, suffered a historic defeat last December.

In Mozambique, the ruling FRELIMO regime declared itself the winner of last October’s elections amid widespread accusations of fraud. The contested results unleashed mass protests, fueled by poverty and corruption, and led to the deaths of over 300 people in the largest opposition mobilisation in post-independence history. In Nigeria, President Bola Tinubu’s elimination of fuel subsidies in 2023 provoked mass protests and rampant inflation. In Kenya, President William Ruto’s IMF-backed tax hikes have sparked an ongoing nationwide protests that has left hundreds dead, disappeared, and tortured.

These experiences confirm the organic incapacity of Africa’s bourgeois nationalist parties to fulfil the aspirations of the masses for democracy, social equality, and liberation from foreign domination. Having abandoned all pretence of national liberation, they now function as local enforcers for global finance capital.

Secretive overhaul of New Zealand terror law targets protests

John Braddock

New Zealand’s far-right government is secretly preparing an overhaul of the Terrorism Suppression Act, under which people who publicly express support for “terrorist” groups could be charged with a criminal offence, according to a leaked document reported by Newsroom on July 22.

The Terrorism Suppression Act was legislated in 2002 by the then Labour government following the 9/11 terror attacks in the US. It was updated and broadened on three occasions, again by Labour supported by the Greens, beginning in 2019. The Act allows the government to formally designate people or groups as terrorist entities, freezing their assets, and makes it illegal to financially support, recruit for, or participate in a designated terrorist entity.

The National Party-NZ First-Act coalition government is now seeking to further expand the law. According to Newsroom, consultations are being conducted behind closed doors involving an unnamed, handpicked selection of groups and “experts.” The NZ Council for Civil Liberties (NZCCL), which obtained the document, expressed alarm at both the secretive nature of the discussions and the proposed changes.

NZCCL chairperson Thomas Beagle drew parallels with the British government designating Palestine Action as a terrorist group for its peaceful activities protesting the United Kingdom’s support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. “Laws that enable governments to outlaw organisations and any show of support for them are amongst the most dangerous tools the public in any democracy can give to ministers,” Beagle warned.

Palestine Action was proscribed by the Starmer Labour government on July 5, making membership of or support for the group a criminal offence, punishable by up to 14 years in prison. Police have already arrested more than 300 protesters, many elderly, some for simply holding signs reading, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

A section of the "Stop the Genocide" march in Wellington on January 28, 2024

Beagle said the changes proposed by the New Zealand government could be similarly used to shut down organisations it did not like. “People will be criminalised not just for being members of an organisation but for expressing support for the issue it was focused on. These are highly dangerous attacks on freedom of expression and freedom of association,” he said.

Speaking to independent journalist Mick Hall, Beagle added that the NZCCL was “horrified that they [the UK] have sunk so far and so quickly.” The NZ proposals, he noted, accompany a decision by the Independent Police Conduct Authority seeking to give police the power to unilaterally ban protests in the event of a “high chance of public disorder and threats to public safety.”

The proposed changes are being discussed as New Zealand’s allies in the Five Eyes spy network (US, Australia, the UK, and Canada) and the NATO-aligned IP4 grouping, which includes Australia, Japan and South Korea, all ramp up their internal security networks.

The fear in ruling circles is that the US/NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, the US-backed Israeli genocide in the Middle East and advanced US-led preparations for war against China will inevitably generate immense opposition.

In Australia the Albanese Labor government recently introduced legislation, without any prior notice, to make permanent and expand the compulsory questioning powers of the domestic political spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). The police-state powers overturn fundamental democratic rights, including the right to silence, the right not to incriminate oneself and the principle of no detention without charge or trial.

In New Zealand, Labour’s 2019 amendment to the Terrorism Suppression Act established draconian “control orders” for people trying to re-enter the country after allegedly supporting “extremist” groups overseas. It gave authorities sweeping powers to designate any individual as a potential “terrorist” and impose severe restrictions on their rights and movements, based on unproven allegations.

The new “consultation” document declares that existing offences under the Act “don’t capture the full range of behaviours or activities of concern that are part of the contemporary threat from terrorism.” It proposes “targeted amendments,” including the creation of new offences to cover activity such as “public expressions of support for a terrorist act or designated entities, for example by showing insignia or distributing propaganda or instructional material.” It also calls for “modernising” definitions for terms like “material support” to cover online forms of support.

The document urges a streamlined designation process, claiming the current system is slow and the designation period too short. It questions whether requiring the prime minister to review decisions twice is cumbersome, and whether it remains appropriate for the attorney-general to be consulted on some decisions. It seeks to improve “the timeliness of the process, by considering changes to who the decision-maker is” and to extend the renewal period for designations to five years from three at present.

There is also a proposal to develop mechanisms to identify online “terrorist” content and sanction websites if they are deemed to be “terrorist-operated.”

This reflects demands by former Labour Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who responded to the 2019 fascist terror attack on two mosques in Christchurch that killed 51 people, by calling for greater internet censorship. To coordinate censorship globally, Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron established the Christchurch Call to Action, an initiative supported by 55 governments—including the US, Germany, Britain and others which routinely denounce socialist and anti-war activism as “extremism”—and 19 tech and social media companies, including Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and X (Twitter).

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith told Newsroom the new changes follow the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch attack, which called for a review of the legislation to ensure it was current and allowed agencies to operate effectively. In fact, the Commission’s report whitewashed the role of the spy agencies which had failed to detect the far right terrorist Brenton Tarrant’s activities. It recommended “enhanced capacity and capability and a less restrictive legislative framework” for the intelligence services, strengthening their ability to spy on the population.

New Zealand Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith [Photo: New Zealand National Party]

More money and power have since been given to these agencies to broaden their surveillance of ordinary people. The Security Intelligence Service (SIS) in its first unclassified Security Threat Assessment in 2023 expressed nervousness about the emergence of popular opposition to the established order, noting “attempts to drive social changes are becoming… commonplace.”

The SIS highlighted growing distrust for institutions, fueled by “perceptions that people are being deliberately lied to and misled; that those with power don’t have New Zealand’s best interests at heart; and that politicians are incapable of solving the problems facing the country.” Social and economic inequalities, the report declared, are among the many factors that “we expect to contribute to the radicalisation of violent extremists in New Zealand.”

The sinister practices of the SIS were exposed with a report in April that the agency had secretly investigated Mick Hall, who was sacked by Radio NZ (RNZ) over his edits of foreign news stories that saw him publicly smeared as a “Russian agent.” Hall had made necessary factual corrections to articles about the war in Ukraine and other topics, for which he was targeted by the media, RNZ and the SIS itself for what were entirely legitimate journalistic activities.

With the support of Labour, the government also last November passed the Countering Foreign Interference Amendment Bill, through its first reading in parliament. The bill, essentially aimed at China, widens the definition of “foreign interference” to cover someone who “owes allegiance” to New Zealand (e.g. a citizen) who commits an offence if it involves “improper conduct for or on behalf of a foreign power” in order to “compromise a protected New Zealand interest.” The maximum punishment is 14 years in prison.

In a little publicised visit to Wellington on July 30, US FBI Director Kash Patel, opened a new permanent agency office in the capital, targeting China. Meeting with Intelligence Agencies Minister Judith Collins and others, Patel said the office will, partnering with NZ, have responsibility across the southwest Pacific to “investigate and disrupt” activities such as terrorism, cybercrime and “foreign intelligence threats.”

The population is deliberately being kept in the dark about the chilling attacks on basic democratic rights. The ongoing expansion of its draconian laws is a blunt warning of the escalating political suppression and censorship as the government further commits itself, in defiance of widespread anti-war sentiment, to what would be a catastrophic global war involving nuclear-armed powers.