While access to the internet itself remains largely unhindered in Russia, many bloggers have come under attack – both online and in person.

In the last two years there have been several cases of technical blocking and numerous cases of content removal. The authorities have also increasingly engaged in harassment of bloggers. At least 25 cases of blogger harassment, including 11 arrests, were registered between January 2009 and May 2010, compared with seven in 2006–08. In addition, dozens of blogs have reportedly been attacked in recent years by a hacker team called the Hell Brigade.

The report did point out areas where access to the internet remains a pressing issue:

The number of internet users jumped from 1.5 million in 1999 to 46.5 million in 2010, and grew by more than 13 million in the last two years, though this still leaves Russia’s penetration rate at 33 percent, lower than the rates in Central European countries. The level of infrastructure differs significantly from place to place, and gaps are evident between urban and rural areas as well as between different types of cities. The worst access conditions can be found in the North Caucasus and the industrial towns of Siberia and the Far East.

Corruption within the federal government also plays a part in what companies control internet access across the country:

Five access providers—Comstar, Vimpelcom, ER-Telecom, AKADO, and the state-owned SvyazInvest—controlled more than 67 percent of the broadband market as of February 2010. Regional branches of SvyazInvest account for 36 percent of subscribers, up from 27.8 percent in 2008. As at the federal level, regional dominance usually depends on political connections and the tacit approval of regional authorities. Although this situation is not the direct result of legal or economic obstacles, it nonetheless reflects an element of corruption that is widespread in the telecommunications sector and other parts of the Russian economy.

Greater concern, however, was focused on blocked online content, particularly opposition-oriented websites.

Although attempts to establish a comprehensive, centralized filtering system have been abandoned, several recent cases of blocking have been reported. In December 2009, a number of ISPs blocked access to the radical Islamist website Kavkaz Center. At almost the same time, the wireless provider Yota blocked several opposition sites. The practice of exerting pressure on service providers and content producers by telephone has become increasingly common. Police and representatives of the prosecutor’s office call the owners and shareholders of websites, and anyone else in a position to remove unwanted material and ensure that the problem does not come up again. Such pressure encourages self-censorship, and most providers do not wait for court orders to remove targeted materials.

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Content is often removed on the grounds that it violates Russia’s laws against “extremism.” Providers are punished for hosting materials that are proscribed in a list on the website of the Ministry of Justice. The list is updated on a monthly basis and included 748 items as of January 2011. The procedure for identifying extremist materials is nontransparent, leaving ample room for politically motivated content removal. There have been at least three cases of site closures, two of them temporary, on the grounds that the affected sites hosted extremist materials. In February 2010, the major opposition portal Grani.ru was checked for extremism, but the authorities apparently found nothing incriminating.

Among the most disturbing accounts in the report were cases of criminal suits and physical attacks against individual bloggers.

Since January 2009, police and the prosecutor’s office have launched at least 25 criminal cases against bloggers and forum commentators. While some cases were against individuals who posted clearly extremist content, others appear to be more politically motivated. The most severe and widely known sentence was that of Irek Murtazin, a Tatarstan blogger and journalist who received almost two years in prison in November 2009 for defamation.

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While traditional journalists and activists have faced a series of murders and severe beatings in recent years, physical attacks on Russian bloggers and online activists have so far been comparatively limited. However, one recent event drew significant attention. In November 2010, Oleg Kashin, a reporter for the newspaper Kommersant who was also well known as a blogger, was severely beaten near his home in Moscow. His coverage of protests and political youth movements had prompted vocal responses from pro-Kremlin groups in the past, but it was not known exactly who was responsible for the attack.

Read the report in its entirety by clicking here.

Kozyrev intends for the union to bring together Russian-language bloggers in an assertion of their rights and freedoms. That aside, he says, it will remain politically independent.

The manifesto enumerates seven “freedoms of bloggers” – of speech, entrepreneurial activity, dissemination of information, authorship, creative self-expression, preservation of content, and assembly. The union would work to defend all bloggers, including creators of podcasts, online videos, and photo galleries, from violations of these freedoms.

The first action of the trade union was to demand the release of jailed journalist and blogger Irek Murtazin.

Kozyrev said that the union will keep track of lawsuits against bloggers and have a database of the development of events. He additionally intends to track legislative initiatives that would have an effect on bloggers, to maintain an archive of correspondence with social and political organizations, and to set up contacts with the media.

The creation of the trade union follows the sentencing of Tartar oppositionist Irek Murtazin, former press secretary of Tartar President Mintimer Shaimiev, to twenty-one months in jail on charges of slander and “violation of the sanctity of private life.” Shaymiev says that Murtazin had disseminated information that he knew to be false, undermining Shaimiev’s reputation and disclosing personal secrets. In particular, Murtazin posted on his blog on September 12 that Shaimiev had unexpectedly died in Turkey.

In a statement to RFE/RL, Murtazin said that the trial was a “theater of the absurd” and that he plans to appeal the verdict. He also said that the decision sets a dangerous precedent for anyone with “any word of criticism” against a Russian leader.

A number of recent arrests of bloggers and have brought internet freedom in Russia into serious doubt. LiveJournal users in one southern Russian region found themselves without access to the website in June after courts ordered an opposition blog to stop publishing. Another blogger was arrested for lewd descriptions of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.