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Russia will insist on transferring Internet oversight to international organizations

Russian Communications Minister Nikolay Nikiforov says the Internet’s vital infrastructure should be managed by the United Nations or by the International Telecommunication Union

© ITAR-TASS/Denis Vyshinskiy

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MOSCOW, January 30. /TASS/. Russia will insist on transferring oversight over global Internet infrastructure management to international organizations, the Communications and Mass Media Ministry said on Tuesday.

"Ourselves and our partners will consistently maintain our position that the Internet’s vital infrastructure should be managed by existing international organizations, for example, within the United Nations or by the International Telecommunication Union," Communications Minister Nikolay Nikiforov said, answering questions from Ekho Moskvy radio station website users.

"Under a political command from abroad, everything necessary is being turned off and on again," Nikiforov said. As an example, he named the situation when Internet users in Crimea registering their domain names in US companies received notices that in connection with US sanctions against Crimea these domains would be shut down and entry to their websites blocked.

"The Russian Federation is against such an approach and against manual control over the Internet," the minister said, adding that Russian specialists, if necessary, "will take measures to allow the Russian segment of the network to continue operating".

"We are not going to unplug ourselves from the World Wide Web, but we have faced the facts when Russian users’ bank cards were blocked," Nikiforov added.

"The European Parliament is seriously considering cutting off the Russian Federation from the SWIFT payments system. Several foreign companies are unilaterally suspending certain forms of cooperation with Russian customers," he said. "We have no influence on these processes. That is why our task is to ensure stable functioning of the Russian Internet segment and access for our users to Russian resources.".

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