Russian officials draft an initiative to reduce domestic Internet traffic routed through foreign servers

Together with the Russian government’s Analytical Center, the Digital Development and Mass Communications Ministry has drafted a “Digital Economy” initiative that would reduce the share of Russian domestic Internet traffic routed through foreign servers to less than five percent by 2024.

According to the newspaper Kommersant, the program calls for the introduction of “digital technologies” and “platform solutions” in Russia’s state administration and provision of public services, as well as new subsidies for potentially breakthrough hi-tech projects.

In January 2018, Russia’s Communications Ministry approved a plan to cut Russian Internet traffic through foreign servers to 10 percent by 2024. A year earlier, the agency proposed cutting it to five percent by 2020. In 2017, the ministry wanted to reduce routing through foreign servers to just one percent. As of last year, foreign servers transmitted roughly 60 percent of all RuNet traffic.