On March 4, the American Internet provider Cogent Communications announced that it was suspending cooperation with Russian customers. This is reported by the Washington Post and Russian news agencies.
“This action … is likely to disrupt and degrade the performance (of the internet) in Russia, though not enough to take the country offline,” writes the Washington Post.
WP emphasizes that the decision of the leadership of Cogent is connected with the invasion of the Russian army into Ukraine and the imposition of tough sanctions against the Russian Federation.
“Economic sanctions and increased security uncertainty make it impossible for Cogent to continue providing services… All ports and IP addresses provided by Cogent will be revoked in accordance with the specified service termination time,” the letter sent to Russian customers said.
One of Cogent’s clients is the largest Russian Internet provider Rostelecom. According to Kommersant, VimpelCom, MegaFon, Yandex and VK also work with the company.
Rostelecom told the TASS agency that so far the company’s entire infrastructure is working normally.
Cogent is an international backbone telecom operator. According to some estimates, it is responsible for a quarter of all Internet traffic in the world. Among its Russian clients is the largest provider