Russian "white lists" of websites destroy competition and enrich loyal businesses - intelligence
Kyiv • UNN
The Kremlin uses a register of approved resources to redistribute the market and pressure businesses. Companies are forced to choose between loyalty and losing customers.
The Russian mechanism of "white lists" – a register of resources that remain accessible even during internet restrictions – is increasingly transforming from a technical regulator into an instrument of economic coercion and market redistribution in favor of players loyal to the authorities, UNN reports with reference to the Foreign Intelligence Service.
Details
According to intelligence data, the principle of the system's operation is already anti-competitive: access to the audience is granted not to those who offer a better product, but to those chosen by the state. In the banking sector, the disproportion is particularly striking – out of more than 300 financial institutions, only a few are included in the list. Thus, the head of the Russian central bank, Elvira Nabiullina, admitted that this structure limits competition and pushes entrepreneurs towards large banks even when smaller ones offer more favorable terms.
Similar actions are replicated in retail and digital services: "Vkusno i Tochka", "Pyaterochka", "Yandex" and VK find themselves in a privileged position not due to market advantages, but due to their presence on the list. Smaller players not included in it risk simply falling out of users' sight during restrictions.
A separate dimension of the system is its use as an instrument of direct pressure on businesses. Companies that continue to serve users with VPNs may be excluded from the list, effectively losing their channel of access to the audience. The choice is small: either submit to the state policy of traffic filtering, or accept elimination from the market.
There is also a third option – financial. Specific amounts are not yet named, but it is obvious that they will not be symbolic. The curator of internal policy and information and communication infrastructure is Sergey Kiriyenko, who has a direct or indirect relation to the formation and revision of "white lists". This configuration opens up wide opportunities for informal pressure – far beyond any technical regulation.
As a result, "white lists" have become more than just a register of permitted sites. This is a mechanism by which the state controls access to the consumer, and loyalty to the Kremlin becomes the new currency of competitiveness, the intelligence service summarized.