Freedom House A new era of digital isolation F or years, the world’s most repressive governments have been working to separate people in their countries from the global internet, a phenomenon known as “internet fragmentation.” These efforts accelerated during the coverage period as authoritarians imposed severe censorship measures and prevented people from circumventing them. In Iran and Russia, expansive internet shutdowns, state-backed alternatives to censored platforms, and restrictions on commercial anticensorship technology point to the adoption of a harsher, more aggressive playbook for digital isolationism. While Iranian authorities have long carried out repressive internet shutdowns, this year marked a further reconfiguration of the Iranian internet into a two-tiered system where most people are cut off from the global internet and only a privileged few are able to freely connect. This tiered internet system enabled Iranian authorities to maintain a stranglehold on online information amid successive crises but also to cater to the country’s elites, who still enjoy the benefits of the global internet. In January 2026, demonstrations that had begun in Tehran over deteriorating economic conditions and dissatisfaction with the government spread across the country, organized partly through social media. In response, Iranian authorities killed thousands of people (with some estimates extending to 30,000 deaths) and imprisoned around 50,000, including some who had simply posted on social media to criticize authorities or support the protesters. Amid this wave of violent repression, the government imposed a near-total internet shutdown for 20 days to suppress the outpouring of popular dissent. In February, Iranian authorities initiated the longest nationwide internet shutdown in Freedom on the Net’s 16 years of publication, as the United States and Israel launched military strikes against the country. For approximately 88 days, the majority of Iran’s population was prevented from accessing the internet, even as missiles dropped across the country. By May, telecommunications providers began offering Iranians “Internet Pro” packages to connect to the global internet, which were five times the cost of conventional service and required subscribers to consent to surveillance by authorities. The Iranian government also fought circumvention of the blackout, raising the prices of state-backed virtual private networks (VPNs), jamming signals from the satellite provider Starlink, and, in at least one case, violently arresting a man alleged to possess a Starlink terminal, resulting in his death. Russian authorities also moved to sever the country from the global internet while maintaining public access to stateapproved internet services. In September 2025, authorities introduced a “register of socially significant services” to which internet providers should maintain access during shutdowns, including state media outlets, state-aligned platforms like VK and Odnoklassniki, and the state-owned messenger Max. The government passed new rules in November that identified “external information influences” as a threat to the Russian internet and authorized the communications regulator Roskomnadzor to carry out a range of censorship measures in response. In February, the government passed a law authorizing the Federal Security Service (FSB) to enact shutdowns on receipt of a presidential decree—effectively empowering Vladimir Putin to shut down the internet for any reason. The slate of Russian censorship laws was accompanied by an escalation of technical restrictions on the internet. Authorities enforced extensive short-term mobile internet shutdowns across the country around the commemoration of the Victory Day holiday in May 2026, and people reported that even websites listed as “socially significant services” were not accessible during the restrictions. Longer-term restrictions on mobile internet were also reported, including a 19-day shutdown in Moscow in March 2026. In November 2025, authorities restricted mobile internet in parts of Ulyanovsk Oblast, which officials stated would last until the end of the “special military operation,” the term Russian authorities use to refer to the full-scale Russian military invasion of Ukraine. The impacts of these shutdowns were exacerbated by escalating restrictions on VPNs, which can be used to sidestep internet censorship. In March, authorities reportedly instructed ISPs to bar access to people using VPNs, and the research group RKS Global soon after found that many mainstream Russian services were surveilling users for indicators of VPN traffic. freedomhouse.org 3