What does blocking WhatsApp and Telegram mean for millions of Russians?

For many years, Russian authorities have planted the seeds of the “sovereign Internet” — a fenced garden where Russians can browse restricted or censored information under heavy government surveillance.

Includes seeds Stricter regulations on companies Such as Google and Facebook; new Government surveillance tools; Control dominant web portals; Throttle popular sites, like YouTube; And create a State-controlled super app.

This week, officials took a big step toward ending that wall when they blocked or throttled the country’s two most popular messaging apps.

On February 11, Roskomnadzor, the agency charged with regulating and monitoring the Internet, deleted WhatsApp from Russia’s national domain name system, which is essentially Russia’s local directory or library for all websites.

The agency did not make any announcement, but WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook’s parent company, confirmed the move: “Trying to cut off more than 100 million people from private and secure communications is a step backwards and can only lead to less safety for people in Russia.”

Two days ago, Russian Telegram users reported a significant slowdown in this application, which ranks second in popularity after WhatsApp. Officials later said they had fined the company for allegedly failing to comply with Russian law.

But there’s something else more significant in this week’s moves, said Alina Epivanova, a cyber researcher at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin: It’s the first time regulators have moved to effectively delete websites en masse from Russia’s domain system.

“Unfortunately, it is not surprising,” she said. “It was only a matter of time.” Regulators are moving to “block everything they can’t control and take another step toward a sovereign internet.”

Maximum control

In the wake of Telegram’s slowdown, Pavel Durov, the Russian-born tech entrepreneur who created it, issued a statement criticizing the authorities.

“Russia is restricting access to Telegram in an attempt to force its citizens to switch to a state-controlled app designed for political surveillance and censorship.” He said.

The state-controlled app he referred to is called Messenger Max, which authorities hope will eventually be the basis for a super app — a comprehensive tool that will simplify Russians’ lives, while also controlling them.

Over the past year, officials and media figures inside Russia have aggressively marketed Max, which was created by VK, the country’s dominant social media platform. The CEO of VK, which Durov originally created, is the son of a top Kremlin aide.

VK is also moving quickly to create an alternative to YouTube, the Google-owned video platform that is also very popular in Russia.

By slowing down or blocking WhatsApp and Telegram, officials hope that frustrated Russians will give up and switch to Max. Same thing for YouTube.

“Max is part of the puzzle,” Epivanova said. “They presented it, but no one was going to use it.” “And as long as you have alternatives that work, as long as you have alternatives that your friends and family are using, people won’t switch to another platform.

“So, they have to block Telegram, they have to block WhatsApp so people can use Max,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if they are liberals or independent media shouting: ‘This is unfair.’ Now there will also be ordinary Russians who have nothing to do with politics.

In statements to reporters on February 12, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the decision to block the WhatsApp application was due to non-compliance with Russian law. He said Max was a “suitable alternative to foreign messaging apps.”

Behind the walls of the Kremlin (fire).

Epivanova said the mass removal of websites from the national domain system is a bigger deal.

In total, 13 domain names were removed from Roskomnadzor’s directory this week, according to On The Line, an Internet freedom organization. Aside from WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube, several major news organizations have been removed from the directory including RFE/RL’s Russian service, Current Time, the BBC and Deutsche Welle.

“Regulators have begun to actively implement a new restrictive measure: deleting DNS records, or DNS manipulation,” the organization said in a post on Telegram. “This has happened before, but only in isolated cases, such as when Discord and Signal were banned in 2024. We only recorded a mass deletion today.”

The move stems from 2019 when lawmakers made significant amendments to a years-old law regulating the internet. Among other things, it allowed regulators to require Internet service providers to install specialized intrusive devices that would allow Internet traffic to be monitored, as well as throttled.

In 2021, regulators throttled Twitter, the social media platform now known as X — the first apparent use of the new devices, Epivanova said.

The updated law also allows for the creation of the Russian National Domain System – a local online directory that operates in parallel with the global domain system that makes the Internet work around the world.

This parallel evidence is what Roskomnadzor used this week to block the 13 website domains.

She said it was “a version… that only contains websites and electronic services approved by the Russian state.”

Even now, Russians can still access blocked websites using VPNs. Known as VPNs, these are popular tools that protect the physical location of a phone or computer and thus circumvent national restrictions.

But the authorities They are trying to eliminate the use of VPNs.

Creating a parallel directory also poses a risk that Russia’s “sovereign Internet” could become unstable, or even unusable, partially or completely, Epivanova said. This threatens to either isolate Russians further from unrestricted information – or harm the broader economy.

“It’s a really big step to disconnect from the global internet,” she said.