"Crazy experiment on people"

The State Duma approved the creation of a "national messenger." Will they follow everyone with the help of him? Responsishes the cyber -wrapper Sarkis Darbinyan

The State Duma approved the creation of a “national messenger” in Russia. Through it it will be possible to receive public services, sign documents and even settle in a hotel without a passport. All educational services and chats will also move to the messenger. The application will be preinstalled by all smartphones and tablets sold in Russia from September 1.

The government has to determine which messenger will become “national”, but the mincifers did not hide: most likely, it will be the MAX platform from VK. She was called an analogue of Chinese WeChat, which was repeatedly accused of censorship and monitoring of users. The co-founder of Roskomvoboda, Sarkis Darbinyan, with whom the New Evrope spoke, is afraid that Max will store all correspondence, transmit data to special services and, perhaps, will become an instrument of social rating according to the Chinese model. Novyevropa tells everything that is known about the creation of a “national messenger” if Max can replace WhatsApp, as well as how the five previous attempts ended to create a “Russian counterpart”.

What was the “national messenger” spoke about the State Duma?

On June 10, State Duma deputies immediately in the second and third readings adopted a bill on the creation of a multifunctional service in Russia, which will combine a national messenger and a digital ID system.

The development of such an application was told in the lower house of the Russian parliament in late May. The deputies accelerated the amendments on the “messenger” to another bill, which was adopted in the first reading back in 2024, the journalist Farid Rustamov draws attention.

As the head of the IT Committee of the State Duma Sergey Boyarsky said , this will be a national platform with which it will be possible to receive public services, certify personality, as well as use an enhanced digital signature to sign contracts for transactions. “For example, with the help of this application, it will be possible to confirm the age at the checkout in the supermarket or even settle in the hotel without presenting paper documents,” the deputy explained.

In addition, all educational services and chats will move to the messenger. Also, as Boyarsky said, it will be possible to use the service to communicate with state bodies. In April, Vladimir Putin signed a law prohibiting this through foreign messengers. All information about a person will be transmitted from his personal account on “public services”, but only with the consent of the citizen, the authorities assure.

“We create new opportunities, not prohibitions. WhatsApp and Telegram can continue to function and live their age, but now provided that the requirements of our laws are unconditional. They will not be able to ignore them anymore, taking advantage of the fact that they have no replacement, ”Boyarsky promises .

Users will be registered in the application not according to the passport, but through the phone number, said the head of the Ministry of Cyphra Maksut Shadaev. Authorization through “public services” will be required if the Russian wants to use additional functionality.

The application will appear on smartphones and tablets sold in Russia already from September 1. As said by Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the appearance of such a messenger is “very cool”, but provided that it will be a “competitive messenger that is not inferior to foreign analogues.”

Why "sovereign" messenger to the authorities?

The WhatsApp messenger ranks first in the ranking of the most visited Internet resources with a monthly audience of 97.4 million people, they say Mediascope data for April 2025. At the same time, WhatsApp belongs to META, and its Russian authorities recognized as “extremist”. In second place in the Mediascope - VKontakte (93.8 million users per month), in the third - Telegram C (90.5 million).

Such a picture does not fight at all with the plans for the “sovereignty of everything and the whole” that the Kremlin puts in front of itself, the cyber-wrapp-water and co-founder of Roskomsvoboda Sarkis Darbinyan notes in a conversation with the “New Evrop”. In order to wean Russian users from foreign services, they must be “strangled”, the expert explains the logic of the Russian authorities.

- In parallel with this state, I want to have its own platform, where you can make everyone migrate. It also happened with YouTube and VK Video.

Only now, instead of video hosting-a messenger and another attempt to administrative means in the absence of some alternatives for users to force them to go to a controlled and censored messenger, the expert says.

Which messenger will become "national"?

Now the government has to choose a platform developer from among Russian companies and give its messenger the status of the national, Boyarsky said after the approval of amendments to the State Duma. In theory, it can be both the state and private commercial company.

The application should be suitable for “strict criteria,” said Boyarsky. So, the audience of the messenger, which will be entered in the register of Russian software, should be more than half a million users per day, and the service programs will be pre -installed on smartphones, tablets and televisions. Under such criteria, Yandex and VK fall in, noted in RBC.

The mincifers did not hide that they discussed the possibility of integrating “public services” with Telegram, but now they plan to develop a service based on the Max platform, which is being developed by VK. This application is an analogue of the WeChat Chinese messenger, with public services and payments, which has been accused more than once of censorship and monitoring of users. As the Cyberadvotoka Sarkis Darbinyan emphasized in a conversation with New-Europe, in this regard

The Kremlin wants to repeat the success of WeChat, making the main platform of human interaction with the state from MAX.

In the future, it is in Max that state services will appear, the sources of Vedomosti claimed . Now users have available a beta version of the application that was presented at the end of March: messages, calls and a chatbot designer are included there. Experts estimated the cost of developing a service of 1-2 billion rubles.

On June 4, the mincifers told Putin about the development of Max, and he ordered to pay “special attention to the support of the Internet”.

Can Max be replaced by WhatsApp Russians?

In order to make a competitive messenger, not enough administrative will and developers team, Sarkis Darbinyan emphasizes in a conversation with New Evrop. Firstly, a competitive market is needed, which, apparently, in Russia “will not appear in the near future,” the expert argues. Secondly, a sufficient audience is needed, but it is not there either, he added.

- In the current conditions, Russia has practically no chance that the Max messenger will be used outside the country, even in "friendly" states. Obviously, he will not withstand competition with WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber, Signal and other platforms. Most likely, this initiative is waiting for the same fate as previous attempts to create a national messenger, ”Darbinyan believes.

It is not the first time that the authorities talk about plans to create a similar project. Before that there were:

• ICQ (VK owned ICQ since 2010 and announced the suspension of the service from June 26, 2024),

• Alleo messenger from Rostelecom (it was removed after two weeks of work),

• "Tamtam" from VK,

• Yandex.mesenger ,

• "Dialogs" from Sberbank (originally built into the banking application, but later allocated in a separate service).

None of these projects became truly successful, these are stillborn decisions that have not interested the mass audience, the interlocutor of Novo-Europe emphasizes.

However, now an attempt to introduce such a service is already under duress, and, perhaps, “he will have some kind of success,” Darbinese believes.

- When YouTube began to strangle, we still noticed a small subsidence of traffic - about 10–20%. Users, especially those who were not interested in political content and entered YouTube for the sake of entertainment (cartoons, television programs, music), began to switch to a VK video due to the lack of alternatives, although technically bypassing blocking is possible. That is why in the winter of 2025 VKontakte showed record values ​​for traffic, ”the expert notes in a conversation with the New-Europe.

If the authorities want to prefer a national messenger on all smartphones and forcibly redirect users there, since this will become the only way of remote interaction with the state, then, of course, some of the people will establish it, reasoned by the Darbinese. However, according to the expert, he is unlikely to be able to completely replace WhatsApp: most likely, users will use both WhatsApp, Telegram, and a new service - but only for individual functions.

- I doubt that he will really be able to massively displace other platforms that people are used to and which they trust more in security matters.

In Signal, for example, there is end -to -end encryption, in Telegram it is partially implemented, and in Max it will not be at all. Most likely, there will be certified cryptography of the FSB, which the authorities can use to decode any messages. So this will definitely not be a platform for free exchange of information, ”Darbinyan emphasizes.

With the help of Max will they follow everyone?

Over time, the use of the “national messenger” can entail additional risks: data leaks, abuse by officials and even surveillance, Sarkis Darbinyan said in a conversation with the “New Evrope”.

“Of course, even by current standards, this sounds frightening for Russian users,” says the interlocutor of Novy-Europe.

Obviously, the messenger will comply with all the requirements of the Russian authorities, the Darbinese emphasizes, that is, to store correspondence, phone calls and the outgoing traffic of all Russian users, as well as provide these data to state bodies at the first request.

- Further - more. It is possible that the state according to the Chinese scenario will want to use it as an instrument of social rating to evaluate citizens.

He had already begun to carefully talk about him at the university level - remember last year’s initiatives ( in July last year, in Russia, they launched the “We” social rating system, the project developed the Russian State Social University. - Ed. ). And this topic at any moment can return to the agenda. In this sense, the Max messenger will become the perfect platform for all these crazy ideas that I would call experiments on people, ”the expert says.

Will WhatsApp and Telegram be blocked in Russia?

The head of the IT Committee of the State Duma, Sergei Boyarsky, assured that foreign messengers in Russia would not block, but plans to limit their work may appear at any time, the cyber-wrapped-up Sarkis Darbinyan is sure.

- Sergey Boyarsky and Maksut Shadaev are clearly not the people who make political decisions. They are more likely “screws” in the system. Real decisions are made in the presidential administration, and if the messengers decide to ban there, Shadaev will have to fulfill this, the expert emphasizes.

The same thing can happen to foreign messengers as with YouTube, Darbinese believes: they will be able to “strangle” them and artificially worsen the connection.

“This is the only way to somehow force users to switch from convenient familiar platforms to an absolutely unfamiliar platform, to which there is no confidence,” the interlocutor of Novo-Europe summed up.