A court in Moscow has sentenced Alexey Soldatov, former Russian Deputy Minister of Communications and one of the founders of Runet, to two years in a general-regime penal colony.

Ekaterina Chuparnova, Soldatov's lawyer, informed Meduza on July 22 that Soldatov had been convicted of abuse of power by Moscow's Savelovsky District Court. Additionally, Soldatov's business partner, Yevgeny Antipov, was sentenced to one and a half years in a penal colony for similar offences.

In the 1990s, Soldatov played a crucial role in establishing Relcom, the first scientific network in the Soviet Union and Russia's first internet provider. In 1992 he contributed to founding the Russian Institute for Public Networks (RIPN) at the Kurchatov Institute, where he worked. RIPN operated as the backbone of the early Russian Internet (RuNet), initially supporting scientific and educational networks and serving as the first registrar for Russian domains. By 2019, RIPN managed 490,000 IP addresses for over 700 clients, predominantly within the scientific community.

In April 2019, RIPN announced its closure and the transfer of its IP addresses to Reliable Communications, a Czech company owned by Soldatov and Alexey Shkittin. However, following an intervention from the Kremlin, RIPN issued an apology to its customers and decided to reclaim its IP addresses.

In late December 2019, Russian authorities launched a criminal investigation against Soldatov and his associates, Antipov and Shkittin. They were charged with abuse of power and embezzling over RUB500mn through fraudulent activities involving IP rights. The case was initiated by Andrey Lipov, a prominent figure in the Presidential Administration and the head of Roskomnadzor. In addition, the conflict was connected to the management of the .su top-level domain, initially designated for the Soviet Union. In 2019, a new law established the Russian government as the official controller of the .su, .rf, and .рф domains. However, many .su domains were never under official government control, and were operated by Soldatov's RIPN.

Soldatov was convicted despite the ambiguity surrounding unclear IP address ownership and transfer laws in Russia, which did not make his actions expressly illegal. In 2019, Alexey Platonov from the board of RIPN explained to Meduza that RIPN opted to cease operations due to its diminishing importance and unprofitability. RIPN had lost contracts to Rostelecom and even to its founding parent, the Kurchatov Institute. Following Soldatov's recommendation, RIPN appointed Shkittin to oversee RIPN's dissolution, which entailed ending unprofitable activities and transferring IP addresses elsewhere. Shkittin selected his own Czech business, Reliable Communications, for the transfer. Evgeny Antipov’s Relcom Group was also chosen for support. Platonov acknowledged issues with transferring IP addresses abroad and Soldatov's conflict of interest but stated that he does not believe this action was criminal.

The court's decision has ignited a strong online response, especially from Andrey Soldatov, a well-known journalist and son of the Alexey. He expressed deep concerns about his father's health, asserting that the ruling effectively serves as a death sentence.

In an article for the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), Andrey Soldatov wrote that the “Father of the Russian Internet” is “terminally ill,” and the court “had no legal right to pass a custodial sentence.”

“The Russian state, vindictive and increasingly violent by nature, decided to take his liberty, a perfect illustration of the way Russia treats the people who helped contribute to the modernisation and globalisation of the country,” he and his co-author Irina Borogan wrote.