Russia is launching a new comprehensive crackdown on overseas messaging apps used within the country. After announcing a nationwide slowdown of Telegram access, authorities have completely blocked WhatsApp, aiming to force people to switch to the local, state-backed messaging app Max and further isolate the Russian Internet from global networks.
Russia's communications regulator Roskomnadzor said Telegram would impose speed restrictions on about 60 million users across the country without resolving long-standing violations, on the grounds that foreign apps must comply with local Russian laws and store Russian citizen data within the country.
WhatsApp subsequently posted on social platform After the announcement of the speed limit on Telegram, there was a rare public criticism of the Kremlin among Russian soldiers, pro-war bloggers and Internet celebrities, because Telegram has always been the main platform for the public opinion camp supporting the Russia-Ukraine war.
Frontline Russian soldiers warned that targeting Telegram would seriously affect combat and logistics coordination. The application is widely used for inter-troop communication, logistics scheduling, battlefield information updates, and fundraising for equipment and ammunition. Previously, the Russian military had encountered communication difficulties in the Ukrainian battlefield due to the cutoff of Starlink communication services. Now weakening Telegram is seen as further weakening frontline communication capabilities. According to the Guardian, one soldier described Telegram as “the only link connecting various units to different state agencies and institutions” and publicly called on policymakers to think twice: “Before you do this, think carefully about whether this is really necessary.”
The pro-Kremlin Telegram channel "Dva Mayora" also posted that Telegram is still "almost the only means of communication for frontline combat units and is used to coordinate cross-department mobile fire teams," highlighting the key position of this application in the Russian military system. Even local officials who rely on Telegram for external information and internal communications have expressed concerns about the possible impact of speed limits. Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram and a Russian entrepreneur currently living in Dubai, compared Russia's measures to Iran's Internet controls, emphasizing that "restricting civil liberties is never the right answer" and said that Telegram will adhere to its stance of free speech and privacy protection no matter how much pressure it faces.
Russia has been planning a so-called "sovereign Internet" (Runet) for years, and had begun relevant testing and technical preparations long before it invaded Ukraine. In this round of crackdown on overseas applications, Moscow hopes to divert more users to the domestic Max application modeled after China’s WeChat through bans and speed restrictions. Max currently has about 55 million users in Russia, about half the size of WhatsApp, which remains the country's most widely used messaging service. Russia has required Max to be pre-installed on new smartphones, but this has not eased public concerns that it could be used as a government surveillance tool.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the service could still return to the Russian market in the future if WhatsApp parent company Meta is willing to engage in dialogue with Russia about complying with its own laws. However, in the current political and regulatory environment, the outside world generally believes that this prospect is almost impossible to realize, and this ban and speed limit measures are also regarded as another step forward for Russia on the road to information sovereignty and network control.