FSB unit responsible for Navalny’s poisoning reportedly behind Russia’s internet blocking

The branch of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) responsible for the poisonings of opposition figures Alexey Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza is also behind the country's escalating internet crackdowns, according to independent news outlet The Bell.

The FSB's Service for Defense of Constitutional Order and Fight against Terrorism, also known as the Second Service, has reportedly assumed control over Russia's internet blocking efforts. Employees from the Second Service were present at a meeting with the Digital Development Ministry in which companies were ordered to crack down on VPN usage, according to an IT industry attendee.

"Everything has changed, because the Second Service has taken over this initiative," one source told The Bell. "Now they go everywhere and decide everything."

Another source reported that  several large payment services recently underwent inspections ordered by the security services. Companies were questioned about whether they process users’ payments to VPN services.

The Second Service first became involved in internet restrictions in the summer of 2025, according to The Bell, and it was this agency that initiated the blocking of voice and video calls on Telegram and WhatsApp. "Allegedly, Sedov [the chief of the Second Service] promised Putin to sort out the internet and was given free rein to do so," one source said.

Previously, key decisions on internet regulation had been handled by the FSB's Counterintelligence Service, or First Service. The practical implementation of technological controls, meanwhile, falls to the FSB's Scientific and Technical Service — the Third Service — which reportedly issued the order to shut down internet access in Moscow in the spring of 2026.

The FSB’s Second Service works to combat "ideological sabotage", having inherited several responsibilities from the Soviet-era Fifth Chief Directorate of the KGB, the political police. It tracks activists, handles "extremism" cases, and is partially responsible for designating organisations as "undesirable" or "foreign agents". According to prior reporting, officers from the service were behind the poisoning of the late Alexey Navalny in 2020 and of Vladimir Kara-Murza in 2015 and 2017.