Inside Putin’s digital prison: How Russia uses phones, fear and informants to crush occupied Ukraine
Russia is turning occupied parts of Ukraine into a “digital prison state” where civilians are controlled through surveillance, fear and propaganda, an expert has warned.
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Megan Gittoes, Senior Non-Resident Fellow of the New Lines Institute, said Moscow’s occupation is no longer enforced only through troops, checkpoints and violence, but through a sprawling system of digital monitoring, censorship and coercion.
In an opinion piece for LBC, Ms Gittoes said parents in occupied Ukraine now warn their children not to speak Ukrainian, while mobile phones and personal belongings are routinely inspected by Russian forces.
She said teachers are being forced to swear loyalty to a Russian curriculum, churches that refuse to submit to Moscow are being shut down, and civilians suspected of loyalty to Ukraine risk detention, torture, disappearance or transfer to filtration camps.
“Across occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Crimea it’s not just a military occupation, but the construction of a digital prison state,” she said.
“Violence remains central to Moscow’s rule, but surveillance, censorship and information manipulation are now just as important as guns and artillery.”
Ms Gittoes said Russia’s aim is to isolate Ukrainians from the outside world, sever them from their homeland and “replace reality with Kremlin fiction”.
According to the piece, Russian authorities have deployed AI facial-recognition cameras in streets and outside residential buildings, while Russian troops, National Guard units, FSB officers, collaborators and newly arrived Russian settlers help monitor local communities.
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One member of Ukraine’s National Resistance told Ms Gittoes that some collaborators deliberately provoke political conversations, including comments such as “things were different under Ukraine”, to identify people who may still be loyal to Kyiv.
Phones are reportedly searched at checkpoints and during raids on homes. Ms Gittoes said having Ukrainian media content, following Ukrainian news or even having a VPN installed can lead to arrest, torture or disappearance.
Refusing a Russian passport is also being treated as an act of resistance, she said, with people losing access to healthcare, utilities, notaries, social benefits and jobs.
Families who try to keep their children enrolled in Ukrainian online education are said to face searches, arrests and threats that their children could be taken away and placed in “re-education” boarding institutions.
Russian-appointed schools are also reportedly required to provide lists of older teenagers who may be suitable for future military service.
Ms Gittoes said religious institutions have been folded into Russia’s occupation system, with the Russian Orthodox Church increasingly functioning as “the arm and eyes of the Kremlin”.
Churches that refuse to subordinate themselves to Moscow have allegedly been shut down, had property seized, and seen clergy detained, tortured or killed.
The expert also warned that Russia has dismantled Ukrainian telecoms infrastructure and rerouted internet traffic through Russian-controlled networks, blocking Ukrainian news sites and independent media while restricting social networks and criminalising VPNs.
She highlighted the rollout of Russia’s MAX “super-app” across occupied territories, which is being pushed as a platform for messaging, banking and public services.
Ms Gittoes warned that every message, payment, contact and official request made through the app could become “another data point available to the state”.
At the same time, she said Moscow is working to manufacture an illusion that occupied Ukraine is thriving, using pro-Kremlin influencers and film crews to produce curated videos of rebuilt streets, cafés and playgrounds in cities such as Mariupol and Berdiansk.
But she said those videos ignore bombed-out districts, filtration camps, torture sites and mass graves.
“In the West, we often measure war in territorial gains and losses, in the lines on a map that inch forward or back,” Ms Gittoes said.
“But what is happening in Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory should alarm every democratic society.
“Because this is not just a military occupation. It is an attempt to engineer obedience through surveillance, fear and manufactured reality.”
She added: “Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory is not a different ‘system’ of government, it is a machinery of coercion used against civilians, and it should never be mistaken for peace.”
A bit bleak, naturally, because apparently the 21st century decided Orwell was less a warning and more a project brief.