It’s Sunday evening in Moscow, late January 2019. A nondescript fair-haired man is walking through the Tretyakov Gallery. All of a sudden, he approaches a picture, looks at it carefully, removes it from the wall, and calmly walks off with it under his arm in front of dozens of visitors. No one bats an eyelid. …
Are you safe from Big Brother’s prying eye in Moscow? Read More
Moscow Vice Mayor Maxim Liksutov has told the BBC Russian Service that the Russian capital’s municipal government is tracking the movements of its residents using tools as diverse as taxi data, cell phone data, security cameras, data from Troika multi-ride metro passes, and customer complaints about the city’s public transport system. Liksutov said that all this geoanalytical …
Hackers working for Western intelligence agencies broke into Russian internet search company Yandex in late 2018, deploying a rare type of malware in an attempt to spy on user accounts, four people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. The malware, called Regin, is known to be used by the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing alliance of …
Reuters: Western intelligence hacked Yandex to spy on accounts Read More
Veb Ventures (formerly VEB Innovations), a venture fund launched by state development agency VEB.RF (Vnesheconombank) in 2011, is confirming its commitment to support Russia’s tech startups. The fund has pledged to invest 2 billion rubles (more than $31 million at the current exchange rate) in seven companies by the end of 2019. The move follows …
State fund Veb Ventures to provide $31 million to Russian startups this year Read More
The Russian Ministry of Economic Development and RVC, the Russian state fund-of-funds dedicated to innovation, have inked an agreement to create a new venture fund dedicated to IT innovation in the field of education. The fund will target projects using the latest word of IT technologies on the global market. The parties are committed to provide …
Russian state to put more than $100 million in edtech fund Read More
The arrest of Ivan Golunov under drug trafficking charges on June 6 triggered a flurry of emotion in the Russian media and social scene. Many see in the case a manipulation to intimidate or punish an independent-minded journalist and its employer, the Riga-based online publication Meduza, whose investigations often target behind-the-scene interests in the Russian …
How federal censors monitor and punish Russia’s mass media Read More
Last month the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) received $2 billion from foreign investors to support Russian startups developing AI projects, the business daily Vedomosti reported, citing exchanges with RDIF representatives. The money came from sovereign funds and global corporations in the Middle East and Asia, including the UAE. The RDIF plans to invest variable amounts in …
On May 30 Vladimir Putin held a meeting on the development of artificial intelligence technologies. It took place during a visit to School 21, established by Sberbank as an educational organization to train IT specialists. Before the meeting, the head of state was told about the academic process at School 21 and had a brief …
President Putin: “AI is one the key areas that determine the future of the entire world” Read More
Yesterday Alibaba, Mail.Ru Group, Russian telco MegaFon and sovereign fund Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) announced they received approval from Russia’s antimonopoly authorities for their “social commerce joint venture.” The JV will leverage on the existing businesses of AliExpress Russia, the B2C marketplace owned by Alibaba which controls a large part of the e-commerce flows between China and Russia. The partners …
Russia’s Communications Ministry has specified a list of threats that may necessitate isolation of the country’s Internet under a new law signed by President Vladimir Putin on May 1. In a proposal published on the parliament’s online portal, where registered users can critique a proposal on how the new legislation would be implemented in practice, …
Russia specifies which threats could necessitate Internet isolation Read More
Crypto regulation is not a priority for the authorities since cryptocurrencies have lost their popularity, the Russian prime minister has recently argued. Prime minister Dmitry Medvedev’s comments were reported by Russian news agency Fontanka on May 16. “The popularity of cryptocurrencies has decreased so far, which likely makes the regulation issue not that relevant already,” said the prime minister at an annual …
It finally happened, at the beginning of May president Vladimir Putin signed a bill that seeks to establish Russia’s “internet sovereignty.” The law’s explanatory note bluntly asserts that it was prepared taking into account the aggressive nature of the U.S. National Cybersecurity Strategy adopted in 2018: “Under these conditions, protective measures are necessary for ensuring the long term …
‘Sovereign Internet’ law: Why Russia could break the Internet Read More
