‘How are we supposed to communicate?’

Russian officials tell Meduza that mobile Internet blackouts and blocked messaging apps are undermining their ability to manage public sentiment

Russian officials are complaining about the country’s mobile Internet shutdowns and blocked messaging apps. The outages don’t just disrupt their day-to-day work — they’re cutting off the channels regional administrations rely on to communicate with each other and to monitor public sentiment. As the Kremlin pushes residents onto its state-built Max messenger and hints that a full block of Telegram may be on the horizon, the system officials depend on to feed information to their constituents is starting to crack. Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev spoke with officials and political strategists to learn how Russia’s information lockdown is backfiring on its own bureaucracy.

‘You can’t get a message through’

In late November, mobile Internet service was shut down in Russia’s Belgorod region for the first time. The blackout came as a surprise even to the regional administration. Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov posted on Telegram:

Mobile Internet has been partially shut off. Of course, this was done to enhance security. But on the other hand, this is disrupting part of the communications infrastructure we rely on here in the Belgorod region, above all for alerts and other safety functions.

Gladkov was the only official who, however cautiously, criticized the shutdown. Since then, multi-day mobile Internet outages have hit St. Petersburg, Smolensk, Arkhangelsk, and other cities and regions across Russia.

Regional security agencies make the decision to cut mobile Internet largely on their own — “without consulting, and often without even informing,” regional administrations in advance, according to one official from the Central Federal District. Two other officials from the Central and Northwestern districts confirmed this.

Regular shutdowns began in May 2025. Around that same time, the federal government began urging Russians to abandon foreign messaging apps and switch to the state-run platform Max. Soon afterward, officials began migrating key everyday services to Max to force Russians onto the platform.

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Max sits on Russia’s “white list” — meaning it’s supposed to stay online even when mobile Internet is cut. The white list also includes the government services portal Gosuslugi, major pro-government media outlets (RBC, Komsomolskaya Pravda, RIA Novosti), large e-commerce sites, and even the fast-food chain Vkusno i Tochka.

At the end of November, Roskomnadzor announced it would fully block WhatsApp in Russia (authorities had already disabled calls in WhatsApp and Telegram back in August). And Roskomnadzor continues to block alternative messaging tools Russians are turning to in order to stay connected — including Armenia’s Zangi app and Apple’s FaceTime.

These restrictions, which allow the government to limit access to independent information far more effectively, have become a major headache for regional bureaucracies. Local officials and political strategists told Meduza that the shutdowns are fueling public anger and disrupting their work communications. And they worry the Kremlin might eventually shut down Telegram entirely.

One senior official from the Central Federal District said Gladkov had simply said aloud what many others were thinking: “[Gladkov] really voiced what’s on a lot of people’s minds. He’s one of [Kremlin domestic policy czar Sergey] Kiriyenko’s guys, so he can get away with more. And, well, being so close to the front [in Belgorod] has probably made him bolder.”

Regional officials and political consultants said that public discontent has been one of the biggest consequences of the mobile Internet cuts. “It’s wrecked people’s daily routines,” one official explained. “Some people might shrug it off and stop using WhatsApp — even though plenty of people are unhappy about it being blocked — and switch to other ways of staying in touch. But when you can’t pay by card in a store or café, can’t call a taxi, can’t place an online order because the payment won’t go through, there’s no way to just ignore that.”

According to two regional officials from the Central and Northwestern federal districts, many residents in their regions rely exclusively on mobile Internet, and some communities — especially remote villages cut off from large cities by rivers or tundra — have no wired Internet at all. “Mobile Internet is already expensive. Not everyone can afford to pay for broadband on top of that,” one official said. “Those people end up without Internet not just when they’re out, but at home too. And that means no payments, no schoolwork for their kids. Of course they’re up in arms.”

“People might think no one [in the administrations] gives a fuck about the public’s problems. But that’s not true,” another regional official told Meduza. “Communicating in Telegram, for example, lets us catch issues early — before a situation boils over.”

Government employees and their families face the same outages as everyone else. They also complain about the difficulty of coordinating with colleagues who travel for work, and with contractors. A political consultant working with the Kremlin’s domestic policy bloc said: “People aren’t always sitting in an office with Wi-Fi — they’re often out in the field. In that case, you can’t get a fucking message through, and you can’t always call. Is it a problem? Yes. Processes break down. Once the election campaign starts and workloads grow, the problems will only grow.”

One official described how delayed messages had already forced his team to postpone several important decisions: “You send something and it doesn’t arrive for hours… and everything gets pushed back.” A Central Federal District official who spoke with Meduza agreed that the shutdowns are disrupting basic governance: when mobile Internet is restricted, he often can’t reach municipal administrators when they’re “out in the field.”

‘They’ll lose control over people’

Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov told reporters that cutting off mobile Internet effectively paralyzes the region’s emergency alert system. Officials who spoke to Meduza added that this applies not only to warnings about incoming Ukrainian drones, but also to the basic “contact [officials] have with residents” — and even to the everyday PR activity of governors and local administrations.

Most Russian regional heads and big-city mayors now run their own Telegram channels. Before the full-scale invasion, the Kremlin “leaned on them hard,” pushing governors to keep their channels active and to build audiences, said a Central Federal District official who works with the Putin administration’s domestic policy bloc. Governors then imposed the same expectations on smaller municipalities.

The comments, likes, and dislikes under posts by governors, regional ministers, and municipal heads “let you take the temperature,” the official explained. They help identify what “triggers people” and, in many cases, help resolve “small problems.” But with mobile Internet restrictions, this feedback system is likely to break down, even though many governors have now launched channels on Max. “Someone who was active on Telegram might simply refuse to follow a governor over to Max. Or they’ll open it only on a second phone, used strictly for school chats and neighbor groups. How are we supposed to communicate with them? How do we get anything across?” the official asked with frustration.

Like any major channel of information, Telegram “in skilled hands lets you push the right narratives” — meaning propaganda messaging favorable to the authorities — said a political strategist who works with several regional governments. Through the messenger, regional administrations can “counter negativity” and “promote positive news.” He said he and his colleagues can “buy popular news channels” or pay for posts in them. That’s how regional authorities reach people “looking for alternative sources of information” and “influence them.”

“You can control TV all you want, you can stuff free newspapers into people’s mailboxes — but people still need independent sources. Telegram gives you that opportunity [to push pro-government narratives under the guise of independence],” he noted. But a state-run messenger, he added, will be perceived “like just another TV channel.” People “won’t read anything on Max — they’ll treat all that information with suspicion.” He worries that if officials shift from Telegram to Max, they’ll simply lose “control over people.” “It’s unclear where people will then go looking for information,” he said.

A strategist who works with the Kremlin and advises several governors said that about six to eight weeks ago, he and colleagues working with major Kremlin contractors were quietly told: “Everything will be blocked, Telegram included.” They were reportedly instructed: “Reconfigure your tools and methods before the 2026 State Duma elections.” But for now, he added, there’s still no definitive plan to actually block Telegram. “The warnings haven’t been revoked, but we’re also not getting pushed to ‘run and rebuild everything on Max,’” he said.

In August, Meduza reported that the Kremlin’s domestic policy team would prefer to keep the pro-government Telegram ecosystem intact at least through the 2026 elections, since replicating it on another messenger would likely be impossible.

The strategist recalled that in the 2000s, when the authorities were “purging” independent TV channels and newspapers by shutting them down or changing ownership, uncensored information still found new outlets — new online media and, later, social media pages and Telegram channels. “Attempts at total control don’t work well. Telegram is a platform where it’s already clear how to operate, and [people] see it as at least somewhat independent — which means they trust it,” he said.

In his view, there’s a “fairly large” audience in Russia that seeks information outside the state narrative. “It includes not only opposition-minded [citizens] but also ultra-patriots and even government officials who may read or even repost ‘foreign agents,’” he said.

For example, Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and the Kremlin’s main negotiator with Donald Trump’s circle, recently reposted a Telegram post from Meduza — which Russia has outlawed as an “undesirable organization.” “In one federal agency, they even set up a VPN network for ‘enemy voices’: people would review information — obviously for work purposes,” the strategist added.

According to him, “new nodes” for sharing and consuming information will emerge eventually — but building them before the Duma elections is “impossible.” “Even if they stuff the whole ecosystem with ‘white-listed’ sites, people will still find places to read and to share. Not everyone — but enough. Then they’ll talk about it with others in their kitchens. These worries don’t get voiced often [by officials], but sometimes they do,” he said.

A Central Federal District official and a staffer in a Northwestern Federal District regional administration said that during shutdowns, even websites on the “white list” sometimes fail — and that completely paralyzes daily life. One of them noted that the government deliberately pushed people into digital systems, “promoting digitalization,” only for “all these digital gizmos to stop working half the time.” “They even broke people down: at first everyone distrusted the Internet, and they forced them in anyway — like with Gosuslugi, which they advertised as amazing and convenient. And now it works like shit,” the official said.

Story by Andrey Pertsev