Putin approved the idea of ​​a state mixer - it seems to be created by VK. What is this service?

Will they follow everyone there? And will telegram and VOTSAP be banned?

At the end of May, the State Duma introduced the bill "On the creation of a multifunctional service for the exchange of information." More precisely, as often happens recently, this is not even a new bill, but amendments to the second reading of an existing document. The latter made amendments to the federal laws “On Personal Data” and “On Protection of Consumer Rights”. The formal author of all innovations is the State Duma deputy Sergei Boyarsky . His current initiative should legally ensure the creation of a messenger who will have non -competitive advantages over other applications.

Literally functions that are not and will not be in any other similar service. Some of these advantages are directly spelled out in the bureaucratic definition of a new messenger:

Multifunctional information exchange service - an information system and a program for electronic computers that are designed and (or) are used to exchange electronic messages exclusively between users of this information system and program ... In which the sender of electronic message determines the recipient or recipients ... and it is not provided for by users ... the Internet network of publicly available information on the network ... and with the use of which the exchange of information is carried out when interacting with interaction with Infrastructure that ensures the information and technological interaction of information systems used to provide state and municipal services and the execution of state and municipal functions in electronic form, as well as with state information systems that are not part of the specified infrastructure, other information systems of state bodies, state unitary enterprises, state institutions

It involves a very tight interaction of the service with state systems.

• Messenger users will be able to certify documents with their electronic signatures directly in the application.
• It is planned that it is there that all parental school chats will move there - thanks to integration with regional and federal educational systems in the field of education.
• The messenger can be used instead of a passport and other official documents to confirm the personality, age, rights to benefits, and the education. All organizations (even private) will be prohibited by the presentation of paper documents instead of information from the messenger.

No. But this will really be a kind of alternative to the site or the application of “public services”.

We don't know. The Government of the Russian Federation will have to choose an organization that will deal with the “creation and functioning” of the new messenger. That is, in theory it can be a private commercial company.

No, the organization should be a Russian legal entity. Besides:

• The organization should own a social network with a Russian audience of more than half a million people . Such social networks are included in a separate register and are obliged to comply with the relevant rules (for example, to independently monitor and censor posts);
• The messenger application should be included in the Unified Register of Russian PRO and Database, which is maintained by the Minzifra.

Apparently, the main contender is VK. At a meeting of the government on June 4, the head of the Ministry of Civil Academy of Sciences, Maksut Shadaev, said that the operator of the most popular Russian social network has already developed a completely Russian messenger, comparable in terms of technical characteristics with foreign services and even surpasses them as some functions, such as video calls. The minister also reported at the event at the event to Vladimir Putin that external services can be built into the VK project - for example, safe communication channels of banks with clients.

His beta version was introduced at the end of March 2025. The service is called Max and, it seems, is fully consistent with the criteria described in the Boyarsky bill. In beta version, the application is a text messenger with voice and video calls. It also has a built-in mini-application platform, chatbot designers and a payment system. And in the future, the developers want to integrate MAX with government services - that is, to adapt exactly to the task that is described in the bill.

No. In the Max project, it is difficult not to notice the influence of the Chinese WeChat Super Adopting. This service combines a messenger, a social network, a search engine, a payment system and performs many other functions. For example, with it, you can order food, book tickets, make an appointment with a doctor or even file for divorce. Most of these functions are implemented through mini-programs, which in 2018 were more than a million. The monthly WeChat audience around the world is estimated at 1.3 billion active users. Most of them are the inhabitants of China. At the same time, WeChat has no full -fledged competitors (that is, alternative platform with many services).

Certainly. WeChat has been repeatedly accused of censorship and surveillance of users, and many suggest that the Russian analogue will go along the same path. Moreover, VK has long and willingly cooperate with the Russian authorities.

We don't know. But it is obviously impossible to exclude this.

• VOTSAP is a service from the META ecosystem, which the Russian authorities awarded with a stigma of an “extremist” organization. And direct threats to the messenger already sounded . So far, only high social significance saves him from blocking: 84 million Russians use the reservoir daily.
• As for the telegram, its audience has grown recordly during the war years and has already reached 68 million users per day. Telegram, which once openly opposed Russian censorship, is now not provoking the state. But still, Pavel Durov’s willingness to share user data with the authorities, probably, where the current owners and management of his former brainchild - VK. So the fate of Telegram is an open question. This is also confirmed by the fresh replica of the First Deputy Duma Committee of Anton Gorelkin: an influential lobbyist noted that the “extreme measures will not reach the extreme measures” if Telegram “will strive for observing the laws of the country in which it works so actively”.

Yes. At the same meeting where Maksut Shadaev presented the MAX project, Vladimir Putin addressed “to the leaders of all government departments”:

I ask you to purposefully organize the support of the Russian messenger. And for this, services that various departments, financial institutions provide, need to be transferred to this platform.

Considering that a week earlier, Putin offered to “strangle” Western IT services that had not left Russia, from the Russian authorities, we can now expect an acceleration of the course for import substitution and the creation of completely transparent to the state and subordinates to the censorship of projects.

"Jellyfish"