Russia is trying to build its own great firewall

VLADIMIR PUTINCIA, Russia’s president, has portrayed his as pushing back against Western advances. For some time he has been doing much the same online. He has long referred to the internet as a “ project”. His deep belief that the enemy within and the enemy without are in effect one and the same means that if , Mr Putin’s foremost internal foe, uses YouTube—his video of the president’s seaside palace was viewed more than 120m times—then YouTube and its corporate parent, Google, are enemies, too.Faced with such “aggression”, Mr Putin wants a Russian internet that is secure against external threat and internal opposition. He is trying to bring that about on a variety of fronts: through companies, the courts and technology itself.