Internet outages across Russia are being blamed on an initiative by President Putin to create a 'sovereign internet' - in other words an internal 'Russian' Internet controlled by Russia.
A spokesperson for the US Federal Internet Bureau (FIB) told FNN:
This is an outrageous attempt by Russia to limit the Internet freedom of its citizens by cutting Russia off from the USA's Underground Empire that currently controls the Internet by tapping into various traffic-routing 'choke points', most of which are located in the USA.
If Russia manages to create a sovereign Internet, we will no longer be able to monitor all its Internet traffic to make sure it is supporting freedom of speech or be able to cut Russia off from the Internet the next time it transgresses our Western values of transparency and individual privacy.
EU spokesperson Ursula Von Richthofen commented:
A Russian sovereign internet will mean the Russian people will know even less about what is going on in the world than our own citizens do - and that's saying something.
We are also looking at creating an EU sovereign internet with a choke-point in Berlin under the Brandenburg gate.
Vorsprung Durch Teknik!
Edward Snowden was not available for comment.