Runet creator Alexey Soldatov sentenced to two years in prison

According to RTVI, the decision was made by the Savelovsky District Court of Moscow. In 2019, a criminal case was opened against Soldatov and his business partners based on a personal statement by Roskomnadzor head Andrei Lipov. He accused Soldatov of “stealing IP addresses,” but the real reason for the disagreement with the authorities was the rights to the .SU domain.

Evgeniy Antipov and Andrei Shkittin were also charged with large-scale fraud (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code). This involved the theft “by deception of the right to IP addresses” by the non-profit organization RosNIIROS. From that moment on, Soldatov was subject to a preventive measure in the form of house arrest, which was replaced by a promise not to go out.

In 2019, a law on a sovereign Runet was adopted, according to which .SU became a “national domain zone” and was to be managed by the state. At the same time, the domain was actually managed by the Internet Development Foundation, which controlled Soldiers.

According to lawyer Ekaterina Chuparnova, Soldatov will serve his sentence in a general regime colony.

In the 1990s, Alexey Soldatov launched the first scientific network in the Russian Federation, Relcom, with access to the Internet. At that time, he headed the informatics center of the Kurchatov Institute.

In 1992, Soldatov created the country’s first Internet provider. From 2008 to 2010 he worked at the Ministry of Telecommunications and Mass Communications (now the Ministry of Digital Development) as Deputy Minister.