A bill on the need to ensure the autonomous operation of the Russian segment of the Internet if there is no access to foreign servers has been submitted to the State Duma.
The draft was placed on the State Duma's website on December 14. An attached note explains that the draft amendments to the Law on Communications have been worked out "taking into consideration the aggressive nature of the September 2018 U.S. national cybersecurity strategy," in which "Russia directly and without any evidence is accused of cyberattacks."
"The bill makes it possible to minimize transfer to other countries of data exchanged by Internet users in Russia," the authors of the proposal write, adding that connections of Russian networks to foreign ones will be identified for that purpose.
The group of lawmakers that authored the bill is led by Andrei Klishas, head of the Committee on Legislation of the Federation Council.
According to the bill, "technical devices" will be installed in the Russian segment of the Internet to locate traffic sources.
Those "technical devices" will be used when necessary to limit access to online resources with banned information," the bill says.
Russia will also establish its own national DNS (Domain Name Server) system -- a decentralized naming system for computers, services, or other resources connected to the Internet or a private network, which will help to identify computers from which data is being added to the Internet.
In March, President Vladimir Putin's then-Internet adviser German Klimenko said Russia would be prepared with its own segment of the Internet should Western nations seek to punish it by cutting off all access.
Russia has been accused of carrying out cyberattacks and of using the Internet -- particularly social networks such as Facebook and Twitter -- to attempt to sow discord and interfere in elections in the West.
