STROIKA is an organization focused on building, resourcing, and connecting frontline anti-authoritarian movements around the world. Founded in 2022 by Yelena V. Litvinov and Tatyana Margolin, the organization works with journalists, artists, organizers, and civil society groups operating under authoritarian pressure across regions including Eastern Europe, Eurasia, East Africa, and Southeast Asia. Pulse 2.0 interviewed STROIKA Co-Founder Yelena V. Litvinov to learn more about internet shutdowns, digital repression, communications resilience, and the lessons Americans and organizations can draw from communities that have already experienced prolonged disruptions.
Yelena V. Litvinov’s Background
When asked about his background, Litvinov shared:
I am the co-founder of STROIKA, an organization working to build, resource, and connect frontline anti-authoritarian movements around the world.
My co-founder, Tatyana Margolin, and I both come from families shaped by life in the former Soviet Union, and careers shaped by work in the post-Soviet space, which deeply informs how we think about freedom, civil society, and democratic resilience.
We founded STROIKA in 2022 out of the urgent need to build an interconnected, intersectional grassroots movement confronting authoritarianism across countries and continents.
Our work is focused on learning from people who have already been living – and working – through democratic backsliding, censorship, surveillance, and state repression.
That includes journalists, artists, organizers, and civil society groups operating under authoritarian pressure across Eastern Europe, Eurasia, East Africa, and Southeast Asia, among others.
We believe Americans have a lot to learn from people who have already had to build practical systems of resilience and survival under pressure.
Why Americans Should Pay Attention To Internet Shutdowns
When asked why Americans should pay attention to internet shutdowns in countries such as Russia, Iran, and India, Litvinov explained:
Americans can extract meaningful lessons from communities around the world that have already had to navigate internet shutdowns and digital repressions.
They offer a warning and a practical roadmap for how to stay connected, informed and prepared when communication systems are disrupted.
Russia, for example, is a deeply digitally connected society, and recent mobile internet restrictions have disrupted daily life, business operations, payments, navigation and communication to an extent few could have imagined.
The Kremlin has amped up its internet crackdowns in 2026, both by slowing down or outright restricting access to social media and YouTube, effectively making them inaccessible without a VPN, but also by shutting down access to mobile internet, in some regions, for days.
This is done under the guise of national security.
Reuters has also reported that app restrictions and outages have become a major problem for small businesses in Russia, with entrepreneurs forced to switch messaging platforms and work around repeated disruptions.
Litvinov also pointed to India and Iran:
India shows how shutdowns can become normalized even in a democracy.
Access Now reported that India imposed 65 internet shutdowns in 2025, the highest number among democracies, even though that was the country’s lowest total since 2017.
And, of course, we have witnessed in real time what a true nationwide crisis shutting down the internet in Iran has caused.
In May, the government finally ordered restoration of internet access after an 87-day blackout.
For nearly three months, the shutdown disrupted families, businesses, access to independent information, and the ability of people inside and outside the country to communicate with one another.
And we now know that even when access is restored, the damage to public trust, business continuity and civic life do not disappear overnight.
Litvinov added:
Americans have a difficult time seeing usefulness in the experience of other countries. We somehow continue to think that we are exceptional.
But what is going on in these countries that have been living with internet shutdowns and slowdowns is very instructive.
Russia has the highest absolute number of internet users in Europe. It’s a very digitally connected society, and many of their digital services far outpaced the ones we have here.
The internet blockages there have been catastrophic not just for everyday casual users, from inability to order taxi rides to inaccessibility of social media, but it’s also been detrimental to many small businesses that rely on internet platforms.
A similar scenario is very easy to imagine here.
When access is disrupted, the effects move very quickly from “I can’t get online” to “I can’t function.”
Early Warning Signs Of A Broader Internet Shutdown
When asked about the earliest warning signs that a digital disruption could escalate into a broader shutdown, Litvinov said:
The first signs are often smaller and easier to dismiss.
A government may start by blocking one platform, drafting a list of sites it deems inappropriate or dangerous, slowing mobile data, restricting messaging apps, making VPNs harder to use, or claiming that access needs to be limited for “security,” “public order,” or “misinformation” reasons.
So the warning signs I would watch for are sudden, unexplained problems accessing specific platforms; mobile data working in some neighborhoods but not others; official statements blaming a crisis or security threat; restrictions timed around protests, elections or conflict; and reports that VPNs, encrypted messaging tools, or independent news sites are suddenly harder to access.
One of the most important lessons is that shutdowns often do not begin as total blackouts.
They can begin as “temporary” or “targeted” restrictions, and then expand as authorities realize how effectively those restrictions limit coordination, documentation, and public accountability.
It’s important to pay attention to these signs and take the necessary steps to prepare yourself for multiple eventualities.
How Internet Shutdowns Affect Daily Life
When asked how internet shutdowns affect areas beyond communication, Litvinov explained:
Shutdowns expose how much of daily life has moved online.
People think of the internet as communication, but it is also infrastructure.
When it fails or is deliberately restricted, people can lose access to payment apps, banking, ride-sharing, food delivery, pharmacy services, maps, work platforms, school communication, emergency alerts, and two-factor authentication.
For businesses, the impact can be devastating.
In Iran, when a months-long internet shutdown cut off much of the country from the global internet, it hurt online retailers, freelancers, creators, advertisers and small businesses that depended on platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp.
The AP report cited an Iranian Chamber of Commerce estimate of $30 million to $40 million in direct daily losses, with about 10 million people in jobs dependent on internet connectivity.
A shutdown is not just a speech issue.
It is an economic issue, a family safety issue, and a basic services issue.
Lessons From Iran’s Prolonged Blackout
When asked what Americans can learn from Iran’s experience, Litvinov said:
Iran shows that a shutdown can become an economic and humanitarian crisis very quickly.
When the global internet is cut off, people do not simply lose social media.
They lose customers, income, access to outside information, communication with family abroad, and the ability to document what is happening around them.
It also shows how unequal shutdowns can be.
AP reported that some officials and select professions in Iran were given more access while most people were left with restricted or no access to the global web.
That kind of tiered access creates a system where connectivity becomes a privilege instead of a public necessity.
The lesson for Americans is that you cannot build your backup plan during the blackout.
You need paper contacts, offline records, alternative communications, local backups, and agreed-upon procedures before a crisis happens.
Internet Shutdowns As Censorship And Emergency Preparedness Issues
When asked why shutdowns should be viewed as both censorship and emergency preparedness issues, Litvinov explained:
They are censorship because they control what people can say, see, document, and share.
Access Now has documented how shutdowns are used to disrupt access to information, restrict human rights, and limit people’s ability to communicate during moments of crisis.
The group’s latest report found that governments and other actors imposed at least 313 internet shutdowns across 52 countries in 2025, the highest number since Access Now began tracking shutdowns in 2016.
But shutdowns are also an emergency preparedness issue because the practical consequences look a lot like other infrastructure failures.
If you cannot reach your family, access a map, pay for goods, verify news, contact employees or receive emergency updates, you are in an emergency, whether the cause is authoritarian censorship, a cyberattack, sabotage, war, a natural disaster or a prolonged power outage.
Civil society groups should treat communications resilience the same way they treat legal, financial, or physical security planning.
It is part of being able to keep operating under pressure.
Preparing Organizations For Communications Disruptions
When asked what journalists, nonprofits, businesses, and civil society groups should do before a communications disruption occurs, Litvinov said:
The first step is to stop assuming that normal digital tools will always be available.
Organizations should decide in advance how they will operate if email, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Google Drive, cloud files, or social media are unavailable.
That means creating printed contact lists, phone trees, and escalation plans.
It means deciding who calls whom, who speaks publicly, who checks on staff, who contacts partners, and what happens if leadership cannot be reached.
Organizations should also print or locally save key documents, emergency contacts, legal information, insurance information, banking contacts, and crisis communications templates.
Litvinov also recommended testing backup tools before a crisis:
They should also test backup tools before they need them.
That includes VPNs, Tor, offline maps, encrypted local backups, and Bluetooth or peer-to-peer messaging tools where appropriate.
Ready.gov recommends creating communication plans, keeping paper copies of important contacts, and safeguarding critical documents. Those same principles apply to organizations as well as households.
Offline Systems And Backup Communication Plans
When asked what offline systems organizations should have available, Litvinov explained:
At a minimum, every organization should have a printed phone tree, a staff emergency contact list, a leadership succession plan, and a clear decision tree for what happens if digital communication goes down.
They should decide whether people shelter in place, meet at a central location, or have only leadership gather.
There is no single right answer.
The important thing is that the answer is decided before the emergency.
Organizations should also keep local encrypted backups of essential files, maintain paper copies of critical documents, download offline maps, maintain updated staff rosters, have backup power for phones and laptops, and identify at least one out-of-area contact who can serve as a relay if local communications are overwhelmed.
The goal is not to create a perfect plan, but to make sure people are not improvising under pressure.
How Individuals Can Prepare For A Prolonged Disruption
When asked how individuals can protect access to critical information and maintain communications with family and colleagues during an outage, Litvinov said:
Do the simple things first.
Print important phone numbers.
Write down addresses.
Keep paper copies of IDs, medical information, insurance contacts, and emergency contacts somewhere accessible.
Download offline maps in advance.
Google Maps allows users to download areas ahead of time so they can navigate when they do not have an internet connection.
People should also agree on a family communication plan before anything happens.
Who is the out-of-area contact? Where do you meet if phones do not work? Who checks on older relatives, neighbors or people with disabilities? What information do children need if they are at school or away from home?
Litvinov also discussed backup messaging tools:
For digital tools, people can install and learn backup options ahead of time.
Briar says it can operate over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi during internet blackouts, and Bridgefy says its app can send messages without internet after users first log in with an internet connection.
These tools are not magic, and people should test them before a crisis.
People also need to understand the security tradeoffs of any tool they use, especially in high-risk situations.
Preparedness As Civic Resilience
Litvinov concluded by saying that preparedness should not be confused with fear:
I would emphasize that preparedness is not paranoia.
It is civic resilience.
Internet shutdowns are often discussed as something that happens “over there,” but the dependency is here.
Americans rely on the internet for work, money, transportation, medical care, organizing, journalism, school, and family life.
That makes connectivity a democratic issue, an economic issue and a public safety issue.
The lesson from Russia, Iran, India, and many other places is not that Americans should panic, but should take those lessons seriously and use them to prepare.
The organizations and communities that do best under pressure are the ones that have already asked uncomfortable questions and built backup systems before the crisis arrives.
