Work chats in Telegram, cats in Whatsapp: what messengers do Russian officials use

It has not yet been possible to transfer them to state-controlled applications from VK

When they wake up, they check “Rybar”, during the day they send bills through the electronic document management service, and in the evening they watch videos with cats and send each other memes about “Khokhlov-narkosh”. “Vorstka” looked into what messengers officials use.

In order not to miss new texts from “Layout”, subscribe to our telegram channel

On the evening of August 24, the creator of Telegram, Pavel Durov, was detained at the French Le Bourget airport. According to a statement from the Paris prosecutor's office, his detention is related to his refusal to cooperate with French authorities and shortcomings in the moderation of Telegram channels. In Russia, because of this incident, rumors appeared about a possible blocking of Telegram, and Baza, citing sources, reported that officials from the Kremlin, government and law enforcement agencies were recommended to “clean up” official correspondence. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov subsequently denied the existence of such recommendations. The officials themselves told Vorstka that they have not yet received recommendations on the use of instant messengers and continue to use familiar applications for communication.

Congratulations on Yablochny Spas: where Moscow officials communicate

“I check major telegram channels as soon as I wake up to keep up with what’s going on, sometimes without even getting out of bed,” a senior Moscow official describes the start of his day. Among the channels to which he is subscribed, the interlocutor of “Vestka” named the recently announced by foreign agents “Brief”, “NEZYGAR” (now they are called “EZh / diary” and NZG, respectively), “Rybar”, which is close to the Ministry of Defense, and the news aggregator “Before everyone else. Well almost” and several channels with news from the capital. Telegram also contains the majority of work chats of representatives of the Moscow mayor’s office, where they communicate, including with “dad” (as some of them call the mayor of the capital Sergei Sobyanin).

Also in the “cart” the official communicates with family and friends. When asked whether he is careful when using instant messengers, a representative of the mayor's office answered in the negative. According to him, on Telegram he can send his friends “a politically incorrect meme about Ukrainian drug addicts” and joke about his colleagues. Various sensitive topics are also discussed there, about which the mayor’s office is worried: for example, city officials were seriously upset by the slowdown of YouTube , where many of them watch entertainment content.

Among the unusual—from the point of view of the average user—messengers used by officials was, until recently, ICQ (which ceased operation in June 2024). Through him, presidential press secretary Peskov answered questions from journalists, for example, and now he communicates with the press via SMS, two journalists from the Kremlin pool told Vorstka.

To communicate with more senior colleagues, there is WhatsApp (an official from the mayor's office jokingly complains about the ridiculous postcards he receives there, and congratulations on holidays like Apple Savior). Important and secret documents in the capital's authorities are transmitted only through a special electronic document management system, which is installed on work computers, he says. The interlocutor said that we are talking about the American software Lotus Notes (now called HCL Notes; other sources of “Layout” in government agencies mentioned simply “an electronic document management system”). The source of “Vestka”, in his own words, has several phones, and on one of them a VPN is installed in order to check Instagram from his wife’s account and read news from “unfriendly” publications blocked in Russia. The official does not have any other messengers, such as Viber or Signal.

A representative from the mayor’s office called the attempt to make communication and information exchange in government agencies safe a “struggle.” He recalled that in recent years the topic of developing a messenger for officials has been raised several times, but no visible results have been achieved. In 2022, they tried to transfer representatives of government agencies from Whatsapp and Telegram to VK products, but this was completely unsuccessful, the official says. Some government institutions, officials and even governors then began to actively maintain pages on VK, but they never abandoned Telegram. It turned out to be difficult to “transfer” to VK pages, since officials are already accustomed to promptly receiving news through Telegram channels, says the interlocutor of Vorstka. He also called the advanced age of many civil servants, who find it difficult to master new platforms, an “aggravating circumstance.” Earlier, “Verstka” wrote that VK would create a new “national messenger” based on “ TamTam ,” which should become a competitor to WhatsApp.

After the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov in France, the Moscow official did not receive any special recommendations on the use of instant messengers, he claims.

Where do deputies correspond?

The interlocutor of “Vestka” in the Duma faction of “United Russia” explained that the deputies are still on vacation, so so far there have been no general recommendations on the use of Telegram. Another source in the party says that such recommendations are “not needed”: “All documentation has long and strictly been processed through the electronic document management system. At the same time, for personal communication, everyone uses what is convenient. Telegram for a deputy today is a tool; it’s not only a messenger, but also a social network that you need to follow in order to be aware of the agenda, plus deputies themselves run the channels.” He added that he himself has all the popular instant messengers installed, but he most often uses Telegram. The deputy considers ICQ an “inconvenient” program, and WhatsApp “loads videos slowly.”

A representative of another parliamentary faction said that he and his colleagues also have all the most well-known instant messengers installed: according to him, it is convenient for communicating with voters. Among them, he named Telegram, WhatsApp, Viber, as well as Signal, which was recently blocked in Russia. According to him, there are currently no recommendations on switching from Telegram to other services, although the leadership of the faction unofficially asked not to use WhatsApp a long time ago (the messenger is part of the Meta structure banned in Russia, although it itself is not blocked in the country). “Telegram is still a domestic system,” the source emphasized.

Vorstka’s interlocutor in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation faction also said that he had not received centralized recommendations regarding Telegram from his superiors. According to him, his fellow party members mainly use this messenger and WhatsApp.

The interlocutor of “Vestka”, close to the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, also assures that deputies, even after the news about Durov, use the same messengers as before. “There is an understanding that all systems are vulnerable. You don’t need to write something that someone can read, that’s all,” he says.

Three senators interviewed by Vestka generally confirmed the words of their colleagues from the lower chamber: they did not receive strict recommendations regarding Telegram; they use, in the words of one of them, “whatever they want.” Representatives of the Federation Council are mostly middle-aged people, and they prefer WhatsApp for communication, although the working chats of the Federation Council, as in the Moscow City Hall, are in Telegram, the interlocutor noted. According to him, he has several of them in his “cart” - a chat with the leadership of the chamber, with the staff and with members of his committee. There are also several informal ones, where he communicates with his friends from among the senators and fellow party members.

Another interlocutor of “Vestka” stated that he and his colleagues do not have messengers other than WhatsApp and Telegram, and that “the boys are fighting in Telegram ( i ).”

According to five sources of “Vestka” in regional administrations, embassies and state companies, they did not have any new instructions regarding the use of social networks in connection with the arrest of Pavel Durov. “If something happens, it will only be after a direct and unambiguous command from Moscow. This was the case after the start of SVO with WhatsApp. The AP said that we had to get out of there and move into a cart. And in some regions, where there are people who like to breathe in the ass of their bosses, they ran to execute. They forced their subordinates to leave WhatsApp and deleted it from their devices,” a Far Eastern official told Vorstka. According to him, it ended with the fact that “due to the absence of themselves on WhatsApp,” they could not check the execution of the order and people continued to communicate “wherever it was convenient.”

His colleague, who works with the embassy in the Far Eastern Federal District, told Vorstka that he “understood a simple truth”: “If you want to be an open book for an American major, use WhatsApp; for a Russian major, use a cart. The fact that the cart is confidential, and Durov's flint is a myth. Just like the presence of backdoors in WhatsApp is also unlikely to surprise anyone.”

Messengers in the regions

A high-ranking regional official from the Central Federal District said that “all employees used and still use the cart [Telegram - “Layout”].” “Of course, only the most desperate people send documents in it. Normal people use corporate systems and email, but the smartest people print it out the old fashioned way and carry it on a piece of paper,” he explained.

Another interlocutor, an employee of a state-owned company, also said that “nothing has yet been invented better than paper in terms of security,” and suggested that in large state-owned companies “the level of qualification of security personnel is sufficient to quietly read the correspondence” of at least key managers. “Just in case,” he said ironically. Among the corporate programs that are used for document management and business communication, several interlocutors of “Vestka” from regional authorities named “Bitrix”: “It is installed on both computers and phones. Business correspondence is there, but people are somehow not used to writing personal messages there; there is no such thing in the culture. And everyone keeps in mind that everything that happens in the system is logged.”

Cover: Dmitry Osinnikov

You can support “Layout” from any country in the world - it is still safe and very important. We really need your support now. How to help us →