Cloudflare is resisting requests to fully shut off its services in Russia, saying that such a move would hurt Russian citizens and likely be “celebrated” by Putin’s government. “[W]e have received several calls to terminate all of Cloudflare’s services inside Russia,” CEO Matthew Prince wrote in a blog post yesterday. “We have carefully considered these requests and discussed them with government and civil society experts. Our conclusion, in consultation with those experts, is that Russia needs more Internet access, not less.”
Prince said Cloudflare has seen “a dramatic increase” in users on Russian networks navigating to international media sites, “reflecting a desire by ordinary Russian citizens to see world news beyond that provided within Russia. We’ve also seen an increase in Russian blocking and throttling efforts, combined with Russian efforts to control the content of the media operating inside Russia with a new ‘fake news‘ law.”
Prince noted that over the past few years, Russia’s government “has threatened repeatedly to block certain Cloudflare services and customers.” His blog post argued that a Cloudflare cutoff would be welcomed by the Russian government:
Indiscriminately terminating service would do little to harm the Russian government but would both limit access to information outside the country and make significantly more vulnerable those who have used us to shield themselves as they have criticized the government.
In fact, we believe the Russian government would celebrate us shutting down Cloudflare’s services in Russia. We absolutely appreciate the spirit of many Ukrainians making requests across the tech sector for companies to terminate services in Russia. However, when what Cloudflare is fundamentally providing is a more open, private, and secure Internet, we believe that shutting down Cloudflare’s services entirely in Russia would be a mistake.
Our thoughts are with the people of Ukraine and the entire team at Cloudflare prays for a peaceful resolution as soon as possible.
Ukraine Vice PM sought Russia cutoffs
Ukraine Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov last week asked Cloudflare to shut off service in Russia, writing that “Cloudflare should not protect Russian web resources while their tanks and missiles attack our kindergartens.”
Fedorov separately asked ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to revoke Russian top-level domains such as .ru, .рф, and .su; to “contribute to the revoking for SSL certificates” of those domains and to shut down DNS root servers in Russia. ICANN CEO Göran Marby declined the request, saying that only “broad and unimpeded access to the Internet” can provide “reliable information and a diversity of viewpoints.”
“ICANN has been built to ensure that the Internet works, not for its coordination role to be used to stop it from working,” Marby wrote. He warned that “tak[ing] unilateral action to disconnect these domains” would “have devastating and permanent effects on the trust and utility of this global system.”