“We don’t want, we don’t want —
You won’t catch us in the net.
We don’t sit, we don’t sit in your internet.
We don’t want, we don’t want,
We don’t sit, we don’t sit.
We declare the year — everything is the opposite.”
On Russian television, a performance was shown that would have recently looked like a harsh political parody. On “Field of Miracles,” children sang a song about how living without the internet is supposedly even beneficial. For the Israeli audience, this story is important not only as another absurdity from Russia but also as a symptom: they are not just restricting communication anymore, but are starting to turn digital isolation into a norm that needs to be accepted, justified, and even beautifully sung from the stage.
What happened on “Field of Miracles”
On March 20, 2026, on the “First Channel” in the program “Field of Miracles,” the head of the vocal studio “Comilfo” from Volgograd, Anastasia Serebryakova, along with a group of children, performed a song about the advantages of disconnecting from the internet.
In the song, children sing that when the internet is disconnected “there are no blogs, no channels,” and also emphasize that in such a case, more time is left for live communication and games, but they call it a “terrible dream.” The lyrics also state that “phones are unnecessary” and there is no need to worry about unlearned lessons due to internet disconnection because “it’s more fun to see friends nearby in reality.” The song also includes the words “the blue light of the monitor didn’t spoil my lunch.”
The studio is based in the municipal leisure complex “21st Century,” founded by the administration of Volgograd.
This performance itself could be taken as a television oddity, of which there are plenty in Russia.
But it appeared at a very specific moment: Reuters on March 20 reported on daily mobile internet shutdowns in areas of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other cities, pressure on Telegram, a complete ban on WhatsApp, and the promotion of the state messenger MAX. The Polish OSW called this a new stage of the “sovereignization” of the Russian internet, i.e., further separating citizens from independent sources of information.
That’s why the story with the song is important not in itself. It shows how the state is trying to shift the restriction from a forced measure to a moral norm. First, they worsen people’s access to communication. Then they explain it as a safety measure. And then they bring children to the federal stage so that it all looks almost like an educational value.
Why the Kremlin restricts the internet
The official explanation is known. The Kremlin claims that the restrictions are needed due to the war, the threat of Ukrainian drones, “non-compliance with Russian laws” by foreign platforms, and the need to protect the “sovereign” segment of the network. Reuters quoted Dmitry Peskov as saying that the measures are partly related to security issues and the behavior of foreign companies, and the law on the “sovereign internet” has been presented since 2019 as a protection of the resilience and integrity of the Russian internet.
But the real task is broader. It’s not just about blocking individual sites. The regime needs an internet that can be dosed, slowed down, disconnected by regions, filtered, and, if necessary, reduced to a permitted minimum. Human Rights Watch directly wrote that the law on the “sovereign internet” in reality expanded the state’s control over the very infrastructure of the network, and Reuters in March 2026 reported on new powers for law enforcement to restrict access and enhance surveillance.
There is also a second task — maintaining a monopoly on explaining the war and internal problems. As long as people have Telegram, VPN, external platforms, and independent channels, it is harder for the state to control how society perceives what is happening. Reuters wrote that the tightening of internet control is also related to the Kremlin’s desire to maintain internal stability during the war against Ukraine and the fear of potential growth of discontent.
The third goal is to drive users into a controlled ecosystem. Against this background, Telegram is restricted, WhatsApp is banned, and people are pushed towards MAX — a state-supported messenger that critics view as a tool for surveillance and control. This is no longer just censorship in the old sense, but an attempt to restructure the digital environment so that a convenient citizen lives within the permitted system and uses only what can be monitored.
Why the comparison with Iran arose here
The comparison with Iran is not accidental and not purely journalistic. Reuters directly wrote that Russia, in building a new system of internet control, was inspired by Chinese and Iranian experiences. Freedom House in its report on Iran for 2025 noted that the country’s authorities continued to make access to the global internet more expensive and inconvenient while simultaneously pushing people towards an “internal,” domestic version of the network, where it is easier for the state to control content and monitor users. In January 2026, Reuters reported that Iranian authorities effectively shut down the internet and communication when forcefully suppressing mass protests.
That’s why the comparison works. The Iranian model is not a complete absence of technology, but a managed, expensive, limited, and easily disconnectable internet that can be sharply muted during a protest, war, or internal crisis. This is the direction Russia is now moving especially quickly. Not towards “nothing works at all,” but towards a regime where the state leaves digital life exactly as much as it benefits.
And here the song on “Field of Miracles” looks especially indicative. It effectively packages the Iranian logic into a children’s television format: don’t complain that the network is being cut; perceive it as a useful and even moral phenomenon. For Israelis, this is a well-recognized logic of an authoritarian regime that first deprives and then demands gratitude for deprivation.
Why North Korea is also remembered
The comparison with North Korea is harsher, but it didn’t come out of nowhere. In North Korea, ordinary users mainly have access not to the global internet but to the state internal network; Freedom House and the US State Department indicate that access to the global internet there is limited to a narrow circle of elites, officials, and specially admitted persons. For most citizens, the digital environment is initially built as a tool of isolation and surveillance, not as a space for free access to information.
It is clear that Russia is not yet North Korea. In Russia, remnants of the external internet still exist, workarounds, VPNs, and some independent channels operate, and society itself is much more technologically integrated into the global network than North Korea’s. But the North Korean comparison arises from another thing — from the aesthetics and direction of movement. When the state not only restricts access but begins to culturally romanticize unfreedom, showing children that it’s good without the internet, it already resembles not the Iranian technique of control, but the North Korean way of framing deprivation as a virtue.
In other words, to be completely accurate, Russia today is closer not to the full North Korean model, but to a mix of two logics. In terms of infrastructure and disconnection practices, it increasingly takes from Iran: internal control, isolation, the ability to quickly cut off communication in a crisis. In terms of propaganda framing, it more often ventures into North Korean territory, where poverty, scarcity, restriction, and unfreedom are presented as signs of the right way of life.
Why this is not a foreign story for Israel
For the Israeli audience, a very simple contrast is important here. In Israel, communication during war is not a whim and not “internet addiction.” It is part of the survival infrastructure: alerts, family, shelters, transport, maps, payments, coordination, news. That’s why the story with the song on “Field of Miracles” should be read not as an exotic plot about Russian television, but as a clear sign that in Russia, the state is learning to turn the deprivation of communication into a social norm.
For readers of NAnews — News of Israel | Nikk.Agency this is important also because such regimes are dangerous not only within themselves. When a state builds a system where citizens can know less, see less, and coordinate less, it becomes more aggressive, nervous, and dangerous externally. The isolation of its own society almost never remains just an internal project. It almost always goes hand in hand with external expansion, militarization, and a constant search for an enemy. This is already an analytical conclusion, but it directly follows from how authoritarian regimes link control over information with control over society.
Why our conclusions are exactly like this
If you put all the facts together, the picture looks quite harsh. There is a law on the “sovereign internet.” There are real mobile communication shutdowns and problems with access to messengers. There is pressure on independent platforms and the promotion of state services. There is inspiration from the Iranian experience. There is a television performance where children are made to justify digital isolation. All this is already hard to call a random set of episodes. It’s one line.
Therefore, the comparison with Iran and North Korea in this story is needed not for the sake of a catchy phrase. It is needed to more accurately describe what is happening. With Iran, Russia is connected by the model of a managed and disconnectable internet. With North Korea — the logic of ideological framing of unfreedom, where people are offered not just to endure restrictions, but to consider them right and even beneficial. And to speak quite frankly, the word “Mordor” here is, of course, not an analytical term, but a journalistic metaphor. But as a metaphor, it quite accurately conveys the mood of what is happening: the country is being taught to live worse, know less, and consider it normal.
The final conclusion is harsh but honest.
On “Field of Miracles,” they showed not just an unsuccessful performance and not strange amateur activity from Volgograd. They showed how the state teaches society to love its own restrictions. And at this moment, the comparison with Iran and North Korea ceases to be just an emotion and becomes an understandable political diagnosis.