Roskomnadzor said that the creators of Telegram channels “must necessarily” connect a bot that makes it possible to watch subscribers

Roskomnadzor announced that in order to register Telegram channels with the supervisory agency, owners must give administrator rights to a special bot @Trustchannelbot . The corresponding message was published in the RKN channel.

“This is the only way for Telegram to confirm ownership of your registered channel. After launching the bot, the registration number received from State Services is checked against the one entered into the bot. There is no other procedure for confirming ownership of a channel on this social network,” the department noted.

The published instructions say that the bot needs to be given rights to add subscribers. The agency does not say why this is needed, but the holder of any administrative rights can, for example, view channel subscribers, its statistics and see which channels posts were reposted to.

United Russia deputy Anton Gorelkin spoke about the bot itself back in April. He said that this is a special bot for marking channels registered by Roskomnadzor. However, at that time there was no talk about the fact that owners must connect this bot.

As SMM and marketing specialist Alexey Tkachuk notes , the bot requirement itself is not new.

“The A+ marking, which is obtained through the RKNovsky TG-bot at the start, was not mandatory and everyone who managed to register a TG channel in the first half of 25 and at the end of 24 did not need the bot. I have never read or heard that registration was revoked,” writes Tkachuk. “But it’s been impossible to register a new channel in the RKN since the summer without a bot, as far as I remember the experience of my colleagues.”

The law obliging bloggers with an audience of more than 10 thousand people to register with Roskomnadzor has been in effect since November 2024. Those who have not registered are prohibited by Russian law from publishing advertisements and collecting donations; others are prohibited from reposting them.