Russians are angry. Very angry. That’s because the regime has imposed sweeping internet blocks that are now disrupting everyday services from payments in grocery shops to mobile connections to taxi apps. And that’s caused something unexpected.
Earlier in April, the FSB claimed it had disrupted an assassination plot against high-ranking employees of Roskomnadzor, the Kremlin’s internet censorship agency. According to the secret police report, which was hazy and had few details, a group of eight young Russians in four cities was planning to blow up the car of a Roskomnadzor official.
One of the supposed assailants, a 20-year-old man, was killed in Moscow on April 18 after he opened fire on FSB agents as they tried to arrest him. As proof, the FSB released a video of a man’s body lying on the ground next to a handgun, as well as footage of interrogations of several detainees, including a young woman, who confessed to involvement in the plot.
The FSB claimed the scheme had been organized by the Ukrainian security services and was designed to disrupt the security of the Russian internet, including the Telegram social media and messaging app.
Since the start of the Russian war in Ukraine in 2014, and especially following the 2022 full-scale invasion, assassination campaigns have been aimed at several categories of people involved in the Kremlin’s war.
First were the ringleaders of the so-called “people’s republics” of Eastern Ukraine — in most cases, self-proclaimed heads of local militias funded and armed by the Russian army and security services. Most were killed in Eastern Ukraine, blown up or gunned down (in 2015–2016), though some were targeted in the Moscow region — for instance, Evgeny Zhilin, a key figure of the pro-Russian Kharkiv organization Oplot, was shot dead in 2016 in a suburban Moscow restaurant.
Since the full-scale invasion, two new groups have been targeted. One is the military —prominent generals have been killed, along with officers, including a submarine commander, and certain units, such as the military flight school in Krasnodar, have been attacked; the latter in a poisoning attack in October 2023. Several dozen graduates were celebrating their 20th graduation anniversary in a restaurant in Armavir when a poisoned box of Jameson whiskey and a 20 kg (44 lb.) cake were delivered (the pilots grew suspicious and alerted the FSB).
The other group was propagandists, such as Alexander Dugin, a virulent pro-Putin nationalist (he survived an attack in August 2022, in which his daughter was killed), and so-called Z-bloggers like the former bank robber Vladlen Tatarsky, who died when he was handed a booby-trapped bust in his own image.
In most cases, the assassinations appear to have been organized by Ukrainian intelligence — both military intelligence (GUR) or the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) — rather than by local resistance groups, despite attempts by the FSB to portray Russian opposition as terrorists.
Roskomnadzor employees are clearly a different kind of target — neither symbolic figures nor individuals directly involved in the fighting in Ukraine.
This does not look like a deviation. Instead, it seems the start of a new trend.
Earlier this year, a 16-year-old Russian walked into a Roskomnadzor reception office and stabbed Alexey Belov, deputy head of one of the agency’s departments, killing him on the spot. The teenager did not try to flee and was immediately arrested. The authorities, clearly embarrassed, tried to suppress information about the attack — pro-Kremlin media were strongly advised not to cover the incident.
Why, then, has this particular government agency become a target of violent and deadly attacks?
Recent Russian polls show growing popular anger over a war that has now dragged on for more than four years, and that has sent the cost of living soaring. This sentiment was crystallized by the regime’s decision to turn off internet access across the country, especially among young Russians. The Kremlin’s total shutdown of Telegram, a messenger and a source of information trusted by tens of millions in the country, and VPNs that help users to bypass official internet blocks, and get access to banned apps, video games, and popular Western music, triggered a lot of rage.
Attacking Putin personally or criticizing the protracted war against Ukraine remains absolutely forbidden and is therefore high risk, but internet censors don’t get the same protection. All of a sudden, Roskomnadzor, which has been implementing internet restrictions since 2012, has become the most hated agency in the country.
This is new. Never before in the Soviet Union or Russia have the censors been a primary target of popular anger. They were understood to be merely the executors of the Communist Party’s or the president’s will, nothing more. That position conveniently stripped them of personal responsibility while providing a ready justification for restricting access to information.
Not anymore. Russians no longer seem willing to buy the censors’ claimed innocence.
The last time Russian government officials became targets of sustained deadly attacks was in the late 19th century, when revolutionary groups increasingly turned to violence in their confrontation with the Tsarist regime.
And that historical parallel is unlikely to be lost on the Kremlin. Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan are Non-resident Senior Fellows with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). They are Russian investigative journalists and co-founders of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of Russian secret service activities. Their book Our Dear Friends in Moscow, The Inside Story of a Broken Generation
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
War Without End: Deterring Russia’s Shadow War
Either Europe will continue allowing Russia’s shadow war to set the terms of escalation, or it will act now to prevent a larger war.
