On and Off

Communication interruptions, mobile Internet shutdown - St. Petersburg may again be offline on New Year's Eve

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“I can’t get through again,” the friend tried several times to dial her mother’s phone number or send her a message to no avail. “I’ll have to ask my son to go see her, she didn’t feel well.”

My friend’s elderly mother lives in St. Petersburg on Narodnogo Opolcheniya Avenue in the Krasnoselsky district. In that part of it that is close to the railway and from where there is a direct route towards the Pulkovo airfield. According to relatives, communication in these places has been constantly interrupted over the past year. And not only mobile: landline Internet and even landline phones are regularly disconnected. Providers and technical services brush off all questions: it’s not us who decide!

Throughout 2025, large-scale problems with mobile communications in St. Petersburg occurred mainly in two cases: when UAVs appeared in the sky over the city or the territory of the Leningrad region or in honor of the arrival of Vladimir Putin in his hometown. For example, in the second half of June, a couple of days before the opening of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), social networks were filled with messages that the Internet had stopped working in different parts of the city. Failures in the work of cellular operators in the city and region were then recorded by the official websites “Sboi.rf” and Downdetector.

On the very first day of SPIEF, mobile communications in most districts of St. Petersburg were constantly interrupted, and in the city center there was virtually no connection. Dmitry Peskov then linked the shutdown of the Internet with “the regime that derails trains.”

The real apotheosis of shutdowns and interruptions in the Internet occurred in St. Petersburg at the beginning of December. In the first days of last month, massive communication outages occurred in several areas of the city. This was especially acutely felt by city residents who used commuter trains and residents of the Leningrad region:

Due to interruptions in the Internet at the ticket offices of railway stations, cashiers were unable to sell tickets to passengers - and, as during the Civil War, they were forced to issue certificates signed by hand.

Not only were the cash registers not working, but also the payment terminals, so people could not pay for tickets unless they had enough cash on hand. Tens of thousands of complaints about the shutdown of mobile Internet in St. Petersburg were received in the first days of December on the official websites “Sboy.rf” and Downdetector.

But that was just the beginning.

Ten days later, complaints about problems with mobile Internet came from residents of all areas of the city. According to some independent observers and indicators of the level of complaints on official websites, on December 11 there was no mobile Internet in St. Petersburg for almost a day, and even the next day in many large retail outlets in the city, customers could not use bank cards.

In response to requests from journalists, officials then responded that shutdowns of mobile Internet were “measures necessary to ensure security.” And they suggested that citizens use exclusively sites from the “white list.” The heads of large provider companies brushed aside requests from journalists, stating that these outages do not depend on them, that these are decisions of the authorities, and also the result of a power outage in the Leningrad region, due to which any communication is lost.

Residents of the Kalininsky district were especially “lucky” these days - a significant part of the district’s territory on December 11-12 was left not only without mobile, but also without wired Internet. It turned out that at the corner of Obruchev Street and Nauki Avenue, a hatch was burning, in which communications of telecom operators passed. And although technical specialists publicly promised to do everything possible as quickly as possible, according to residents of the area, they experienced interruptions in communication for three days.

Already on December 17, St. Petersburg, judging by the number of requests from citizens, experienced a complete shutdown of the mobile Internet. After several UAV attacks on objects in the Leningrad region and in the northern regions of the city, which occurred on December 11-15, there was a controlled communications blackout, which the authorities explained as “security measures.” Without hiding the fact that they are actually transferring towers from 4G to 2G - that is, in fact, almost stopping the transmission of mobile traffic.

Against this background, the warnings of the Governor of the Leningrad Region, Alexander Drozdenko, that “law enforcement agencies, based on the operational situation,” could extend communication blackouts into the New Year holidays, only confirmed the authorities’ readiness for a complete shutdown of the Internet.

How to get to the library?

During the darkest and darkest days in St. Petersburg, from December 20 to 23, in addition to the low clouds, slush and strong winds common at this time of year, the city center received the “gift” of a mobile Internet shutdown for several days. From Sunday to Tuesday, a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council and the already traditional pre-New Year informal summit of the EAEU took place in St. Petersburg. Vladimir Putin came from Moscow to attend them. Such visits always caused disruptions in the operation of many city systems, primarily transport. Throughout 2025, they were accompanied by massive outages of mobile communications, to which St. Petersburg residents are already adapting.

“I don’t often go to the center, I work mostly at home, but just these days I had to spend not far from Palace Square,” said a colleague. “I really needed the Internet, so I thought out the route in advance - I know where there is Wi-Fi that I can connect to, and I’m already used to planning my route so as to be close to such places. Normal communication was restored only when I returned home.”

St. Petersburg residents began complaining about chronic interruptions in mobile Internet and mobile communications already at lunchtime on December 21. The Downdetector website received hundreds of messages that in the center of St. Petersburg the mobile Internet does not work at all or turns on for a few minutes and immediately disappears. By the morning of December 22, users of almost all major operators - Beeline, MTS and Megafon - announced they were disconnected from the Internet in the center of St. Petersburg.

Well, when Vladimir Putin, together with foreign guests, accompanied by the director of the Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky, went on a tour of the museum, the Hermitage and the surrounding area stopped communicating altogether. Even the next day, December 23, St. Petersburg residents who found themselves in the city center complained that the connection was completely lost in places.

But energetic authorities and responsible providers do not leave the residents of St. Petersburg with their concerns; they constantly inform them about places with free Wi-Fi hotspots and send out maps with lists of addresses. There are such points, for example, in all city libraries, from district to Russian National, as well as in MFC offices, cafes, and restaurants.

So, if you believe the promises of the authorities to leave St. Petersburg and its inhabitants without mobile communications for the New Year, we can expect an influx of citizens to reading rooms and coffee shops - is it in vain that the city bears the title of “cultural capital”?