Internet Shutdowns Spike in Russia

Shutdowns of the internet spiked in Russia in the first months of 2022 as the country was trying to restrict information among its citizens about the invasion of Ukraine and also retaliated against Western social media brands which has banned Russian state-run media from their platforms.

The Russian shutdowns lasted for 543 hours as of March 22, affecting 113 million people and racking up an economic cost of $1.21 billion - by far the highest in 2022 among all countries surveyed by Top 10 VPN.

Looking back at the study that started in 2019, other countries emerge as those with most fervor for cutting its citizens off from the world wide web. In 2019 and 2020, India cause some of the most costly shutdowns. The cutoffs were employed during the Citizenship Amendment Act protests, which was a new set of citizenship laws disadvantaging Muslim immigrants to India. They cost $1.3 billion and $2.8 billion in those two years, affecting 8.4 million and 10.3 million internet users, respectively.

In 2021, the coup in Myanmar caused outages costing $2.8 billion, affecting 22 million people for more than 12,000 house. The country also habitually shuts down the internet in its Western Chin state on the border with Bangladesh, where the state has been waging a bloody campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority.