Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree releasing Herman Klimenko from the post of adviser on Internet development. Klimenko worked in the presidential administration for 2.5 years - he was appointed in January 2016.

Klimenko founded the Internet service Liveinternet with its own platform for blogging. This service also collects online statistics on attendance of resources and competes in this segment with TNS. In 2013, Klimenko was appointed president of the Association for the Development of Electronic Commerce, in January 2014 he launched a news aggregator based on data from social networks Mediametrix. From 2015 to December 2017, Klimenko headed the Institute for Internet Development (IRI), created with the support of the former deputy head of the presidential administration, Vyacheslav Volodin.

 Klimenko's appointment as an adviser was Putin's personal offer, a source in the Kremlin told Vedomosti. President's press secretary Dmitry Peskov called the proposal to appoint Klimenko "impromptu."

Klimenko's acquaintances said that at that time he had no influential friends, no oligarchs behind him, too, says one of his acquaintances. Another interlocutor of Vedomosti said that Klimenko was well acquainted with the then first deputy head of the presidential administration, Vyacheslav Volodin: he liked the documents that the IRI had developed, and it was thanks to Volodin Klymenko that he received such a proposal.

In his Facebook, Klimenko thanked the president for his trust. "Perhaps this was the most difficult time in my life. But the most interesting, "- he wrote. In the future, Klimenko will focus on work in the field of telemedicine, follows from the message.

Klimenko will be remembered primarily by a number of ambiguous and sometimes extraordinary statements. For example, in December 2016, in an interview with RT, he warned Russian users that it was necessary to prepare for disconnecting Russia from the global Internet. "Our Western partners have disabled Crimea from the services of Google and Microsoft. As well as domain owners living in the Crimea, they lost what they had earned. Our country should be ready to be disconnected from the world's Internet - there is a high likelihood of "tectonic shifts" in our relations with the West in the direction of deterioration, "Klimenko said.

 In early 2017, Klimenko called the restriction of the Internet the only way to ensure Russia's information security. "One way is a Chinese option. Of course, control is needed, because there is not one possibility to prevent it. China is less scrupulous about the public opinion, they assessed the threat and restricted the Internet. Now they have no such problems, "TASS quoted Klimenko's lecture at the Army and Society course at the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces.

In 2018, after the Tagansky district court decided to block the Telegram messenger in Russia, Klimenko advised citizens to switch to the ICQ messenger, which, in his words, is in no way inferior to the Telegram "from the point of view of the average user." Later Klimenko explained that he brought ICQ only as an example and this is not an advertising story. "The question is that besides Telegram there are a lot of other resources. I have all the instant messengers on my iPhone that are just there. As an example, I brought ICQ ", - quoted Klimenko TASS.