Fearing Russian domestic unrest, Vladimir Putin battles the internet in ways that affect everyone | Democracy, elections and voting at Democracy Chronicles

When Yekaterina Vologzheninova, a shop assistant from central Russia, shared around half a dozen links about the war in eastern Ukraine with her online friends, she was expecting nothing more than a few heated arguments, at the most. But her 52 virtual friends on VKontakte, the Facebook of the Russian-speaking world, weren’t the only ones following…