West’s actions have precipitated regulation of cyberspace, says Russian diplomat

Moscow: By their actions the Western nations have only precipitated regulation of the internet sphere, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday.

“It was them to precipitate what we have been stopping short of doing for quite a long time. We felt embarrassed about the necessity to impose regulative measures in the cyberspace. In what concerns American internet monopolies,” she said in an interview with the Voskresny Vecher (Sunday Evening) with Vladimir Solovyov program on the Rossiya-1 television channel.
“We kept on thinking how it might be taken, whether we would violate any principles. No, we will not because they were violated long ago by the collective West,” she stressed.

According to the Russian diplomat, internet monopolies and the Western political establishment behind them, in particular Washington, NATO, Brussels, “are being guided only by their own interests, political considerations and unwillingness to conduct fair competition.”

“They are demonstrating immoral conduct in the web establishing monopolies, ignoring their own legislation, international law, and, of course, our Russian laws,” she said, adding that Russia is drafting a package of documents and bills to protect Russian journalists, the mass media, and the public.