“Motherland” Protects Its Fraudsters: Russia Is Building a Telephone Iron Wall

Russia has taken another step toward ensuring the safety of its citizens — and, as one might guess, toward achieving its own telecommunications self-sufficiency. According to the second package of “anti-fraud measures,” which the State Duma passed in its first reading in February, the government plans to block incoming international calls to landlines for Russians over the age of 60. Officially, this is to protect trusting pensioners from foreign telephone scammers. Unofficially — it is hard to resist the thought that this is simply another round of building an iron curtain, now extended to the telephone network.

That said, the bill’s authors proved flexible: if a citizen genuinely wants to hear a foreign voice on the line, they can personally notify their operator of this unorthodox wish. In other words, silence from the outside world becomes the default, and the desire to hear it becomes an administrative act of personal courage. What was perfectly ordinary just yesterday—receiving a call from relatives abroad — will tomorrow become a privilege reserved for those who took the trouble to submit a request.

It should also be noted that the rule will not apply to numbers from the Union State — meaning Belarus remains accessible. The rest of the world does not. The geography of trust, as we can see, is clearly defined.

Now for the most interesting part.

The official justification for the law is the fight against telephone scammers who call from abroad and swindle money from the elderly. The problem is certainly real and acute. But this raises a delicate question: what will happen to the domestic fraud sector, which, according to Russian law enforcement officials themselves, is thriving just as vigorously and, unlike its foreign competitors, calls exclusively from numbers with the +7 code?

The logic of the law, if you think about it, runs something like this: we cannot allow a grandmother from Ryazan to fall victim to some scoundrel from Kyiv or Warsaw — that would be an affront to national dignity. But if that same pensioner hands over her savings to a “bank security officer” from Nizhny Novgorod — that is purely an internal matter, a private arrangement between citizens of the same state.

The state, in this way, carefully protects domestic producers from unfair foreign competition. Protectionism in its purest form — only instead of tariffs, a legislative blockade against outside challengers.

It is also worth considering the aesthetics of this decision.

The Iron Curtain of the Soviet era closed the borders to people — it prevented them from leaving. The new, digital and telephonic curtain operates more subtly: it simply prevents anyone from calling in. Bodies may remain wherever they are, but the information space is neatly contracted to the confines of the Union State, plus whatever one declares to one’s operator.

It is telling that the measures specifically target landline phones and people over 60—that is, those most dependent on their home telephone as their primary window to the world. Young people have long communicated via messaging apps — those have not been shut down yet (though, judging by the pace, their turn will come). But the grandmother with a rotary-dial phone in the kitchen — she is now “protected.” In the sense of “protection” that is difficult to distinguish from isolation.

All that remains is to wish the bill’s authors consistency.

If foreign scammers are dangerous — shut down the internet too. If foreign news distorts reality — it has largely been shut down already. If foreign words pollute the language — there are lawmakers with precisely such bills in hand. If foreign air carries unwanted ideas…

We will stop there. The State Duma has no shortage of inspiration as it is.