Durov won: why blocking Telegram is doomed to failure

Attempts by Roskomnadzor to block access to Telegram turned into the largest blocking in history - over the past 24 hours, the agency actually blocked 0.4% of the entire Internet in Russia. This did not lead to the desired results - and, apparently, will not lead.

Roskomnadzor's successes

• On Monday evening, Roskomnadzor (RKN) began blocking IP addresses belonging to Google and Amazon, to which Telegram moved after blocking its IP. By 17:00 on Tuesday, RKN had blocked more than 18 million IP addresses, which is 0.4% of all available IP addresses in the world.
• A variety of services have been affected by the blocking, from retailers to online games . According to the head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, all sites that are accidentally blocked and report this to the RKN hotline will be immediately unblocked.
• Around 18:00 Moscow time, Zharov told The Bell that “Telegram degradation is 30%.”
• Telegram founderPavel Durov previously wrote that Telegram “does not observe a significant drop in the activity of Russian users.”
• On the first day of Telegram blocking, according to the TGStat service, the number of views in 40 thousand Russian-language channels increased by a total of 30 million. This is approximately 17% more than the average.

Read also From riot police to Roskomnadzor: how Telegram became the main messenger in Russia

What will happen next

• Roskomnadzor has minimal chances of completely blocking Telegram. After the agency blocks one IP group that the messenger uses, it moves to another.
• “This is an endless process, because RKN will unblock those IP addresses that are associated with legal activity, and Telegram will be able to use them again. Hosters will not refuse to cooperate with Telegram just because of problems in Russia,” says Alexander Kalinin, head of the Group-IB cyber incident response center.
• This evening, RKN actually began to unblock previously closed IPs - the blocking was lifted from 3 million addresses.
• Meduza provides a detailed explanation of why the blocking will fail.

What's in it for me?

If Roskomnadzor has to abandon blocking Telegram, this will mean that Russia is not yet ready to create an analogue of the “Great Firewall of China.” But in case of defeat, the state will probably come up with some new prohibitive measures - the question is which ones.

Petr Mironenko, Svetlana Reiter, Anastasia Yakoreva