Russia is set to unleash a new wave of mobile internet blackouts that could disrupt access to WhatsApp, Telegram, Google’s services, and YouTube in several regions, according to an internet monitor. Local officials describe them as security related, but digital rights groups say they are a significant escalation of a broader effort by the country to control what flows over the internet.
According to Reuters, the shutdowns will be posited as temporary blockages intended to target specific services and disrupt Ukrainian drone activity. But the scale — the focus is on the most popular foreign apps — signals an attempt to further clamp down on cross-border communications, where encrypted messaging and video apps play an outsize role.
The Official Justification
According to Russian officials, the blackouts are meant to disrupt the control and coordination of drones. The Digital Development Ministry has also suggested a “special technical solution” that allow certain domestic services to remain online in the event mobile data is cut, although no details have been made public. That list is said to include the Mir electronic payment system and MAX, a new state-mandated messenger that is to be pre-installed on smartphones being sold in the country.
Security officials have for years pushed for more oversight of foreign-owned platforms, saying that these platforms can be used to further hostile operations and disinformation. Critics say the wide applicability of the blocks — they hit everything from text messaging to video search — reach well beyond battlefield dangers and are certain to chill lawful speech and everyday commerce.
How the Blackouts Might Work
For years, Russia’s telecom regulator, Roskomnadzor, has been installing deep packet inspection equipment on carrier networks that can throttle or block apps. Selective app bans are one mechanism, while broader mobile data shutdowns are another. And when whole mobile networks fall dark, the usual workarounds like VPNs won’t provide any assistance — there’s no connectivity left to tunnel through.
Independent observatories have previously confirmed regionwide outages in places including Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia in the north Caucasus. Those test runs demonstrated that the authorities can seal off large areas quickly, and often with little warning. Access Now has tracked the global spread of “security” blackouts and observed how it often extends to cover political censorship.
Who Gets Something off the Whitelist — and Why It’s Significant
Officials say some domestic tools will still be at their disposal. A whitelist that allows Mir payments and MAX messaging would leave state-favored functions of the core alone while allowing foreign apps that provide strong end-to-end encryption to continue to be sidelined. Metalike companies have said such policies were intended to shift users to platforms where authorities have better eyes on what is happening.
The strategy falls within Russia’s broader “sovereign internet” model, which consolidates traffic and infrastructure control. The greater number of users switch to secure services, the easier it is to continue blackouts without bringing to a stop government, banking, and emergency services.
Effect on Users, Businesses and Media
Short blackouts can also be expensive. NetBlocks’ Cost of Shutdown Tool consistently calculates daily losses in the millions for a national-scale shutdown, based on ceased advertising, e-commerce, logistics and media activity. For small businesses that depend on WhatsApp for customer service or YouTube for marketing, the impact is a sudden one.
Domestic sentiment is not uniform. The Moscow Times has reported protests in multiple cities, including by members of the local Communist Party, who contend restrictions on voice and video calls infringe on constitutional rights to free communication. Use of VPNs has spiked whenever new blocks have shown up — Top10VPN noted huge peaks after prior platform bans — but full mobile outages dull those instruments.
A History of Platform Controls
Russia’s posture toward foreign platforms has grown increasingly intransigent over time. Facebook and Instagram are still banned as companies and under extremism laws, while X/Twitter and Google services have been throttled, fined and ordered to takedown — on and off. Even with the restrictions, usage continues: Bloomberg, citing Sensor Tower, reported that Instagram still had some 33 million active users in Russia, a number that was down by more than 20 million from pre-ban levels, but still one of the world’s largest audiences.
Telegram has been a different story. Rebounding from an earlier, ineffective effort to ban the app, it has since become deeply entrenched in political discussion and local news. That ubiquity means any new interruption — and especially one that revolves around a blackout of a mobile network — is far more significant than a typical platform ban.
What to Watch Next
Those include how widely blackouts are enforced, for how long and whether local actions evolve into national ones. What to watch for: Carrier notices about planned maintenance that overlaps with outages, measurement data from NetBlocks and OONI, and whether app whitelists are extended beyond payments and MAX.
For now, the signal is clear: Russia is willing to graduate from platform-by-platform enforcement to network-level governance. If the service blackout is enforced at scale, the model would redraw the country’s digital map, in favor of state-approved services whose rivals — and audiences — would lie on the sidelines in China but reach out to real people beyond its borders.
