A Russian government document doing the rounds has led some to suggest the country is preparing to disconnect from the global internet.

The letter appears to be an order from Andrei Chernenko, Russia’s deputy digital minister, demanding that Russian state-owned websites and online portals beef up their security by Friday this week.

It tells them to move their hosting to Russian services if they are currently using foreign hosting services, and to scrub their web pages of all JavaScript code that has been downloaded from foreign sources; JavaScript is one of the main web programming languages, and the document cites banners and visits counters as examples of the sort of page elements that might need to be removed.

It includes one instruction that particularly raises eyebrows: Russian state-owned web services must by Friday make sure they have switched to domain name system (DNS) servers located on Russian soil. The global DNS is what the internet uses to translate web addresses like “fortune.com” into the alphanumerical internet protocol (IP) addresses that computers use to communicate

Russia has denied its plans to cut off from the global web. Chernenko’s department said on Monday there were “no plans” to disconnect Russia from the global internet, telling the Russian news agency Interfax that the letter was all about protecting Russian websites from foreign cyberattacks.

source fortune.com

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