Control over blocking in the Russian segment of the internet has been transferred to the FSB’s Service for the Protection of the Constitutional Order and the Fight Against Terrorism (informally, the FSB’s Second Service), which had also been linked to the poisoning of Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza. The Bell reports this, citing sources.
According to one source from the IT sector who attended a meeting with the Ministry of Digital Development, where companies were instructed to combat VPNs, officers from the Second Service were present at the event.
“Everything changed because the Second Service seized the initiative [in the industry]. Now they go everywhere, they decide everything,” the source said.
Another source told the publication that several weeks ago, inspections were carried out at several major payment services at the initiative of the security forces. The companies were asked whether they process user payments to VPN services.
According to The Bell, the Second Service began getting involved in internet restrictions as early as the summer of 2025, and it was the force behind blocking calls in Telegram and WhatsApp.
“Sedov [the head of the Second Service] allegedly promised Putin to bring order to the internet and received carte blanche,” one of the sources said.
The publication writes that key decisions on internet regulation had previously been made by the FSB’s First Service (the Counterintelligence Service), within which the Information Security Center (FSB ISC) operates.
Practical control over the technology sphere is handled by the FSB’s Third Service (the Scientific and Technical Service, STS). According to The Bell, it was this service that ordered the internet shutdown in Moscow in the spring of 2026.
The Second Service deals with combating “ideological subversion,” having inherited some functions of the 5th Directorate of the KGB of the USSR. It now monitors activists, handles “extremism” cases, and takes part in designating organizations as “undesirable” and “foreign agents.” According to media reports, officers from this service were involved in organizing the poisonings of Alexei Navalny in 2020 and Vladimir Kara-Murza in 2015 and 2017.