Vladimir Putin has whipped up yet more controversy by branding the Internet as a “CIA project” during a media conference on Thursday, according to the Associated Press.

The Russian leader made his comments at an interview in St. Petersburg yesterday, adding that the web had originally been set up by America’s overseas espionage agency, and that it was “continuing to develop it”.

The comments are controversial because Russia has long pushed for the Internet to be governed by the United Nations, and for individual nations to be given more control over what their citizens can access online. This notion has gained ground in countries like Brazil and Germany in recent months, following the revelations of Edward Snowden about the NSA’s Internet spying activities.

During a recent televised interview, Putin dodged a question from Snowden about whether or not Russia also intercepted and stored web communications. “I hope we don’t do that,” quipped the President. “We don’t have as much money as they do in the US.”

Putin went on to admit that suspected terrorists and criminals were subject to surveillance, but insisted Russian had no mass surveillance programs in place, even though it probably does have this capability.

That’s not to say Russia’s Internet freedom record is a squeaky-clean one – far from it. In recent years, the country has implemented strict censorship laws purportedly aimed at “protecting children” from harmful content and pornography. But these same laws have also been used to silence critics of the Putin government, most recently in March when Russian ISPs were ordered to block access to a number of opposition websites, including those of Alexei Navalny and chess legend Garry Kasperov.

More recently, it was reported that Pavel Durov, founder of Russia’s biggest social network Vkontakte, had been ousted from the company and replaced by “allies” of Putin. Around the same time, Google Maps apparently caved into pressure and started identifying the Crimea as a part of Russia. The AP report yesterday noted that Putin also criticized Yandex, Russia’s dominant search engine, for relocating its headquarters to The Netherlands, “not only for tax reasons but for other considerations too”. He was responding to a questioner who complained that Yandex was storing information on servers abroad, potentially compromising Russian security.

Such moves suggest the Russian leader is aiming to tighten his grip on Russia’s IT sector and Internet access in a bid to consolidate his power. This could explain his general distrust of US technology in general – recently the country stopped using hardware from Apple in favor of Korean firm Samsung, citing “security concerns”.

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