No country for Telegram. Russia starts second attempt to block one of its most popular messangers

Russian state censors have moved to degrade Telegram’s performance across the country in the most aggressive attempt to subdue the messaging platform since a failed total ban nearly nine years ago.

Today, the state censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, confirmed it had begun “throttling” the app, citing a persistent failure to comply with local laws and an alleged lack of protection for user data. The move follows weeks of intermittent disruption for users, who have reported significant delays in loading media files and frequent connection timeouts.

“The state’s position on the functioning of social networks and any internet services on the territory of Russia remains unchanged,” the regulator said in a statement. “We are absolutely open to working with any domestic or foreign internet resources. But on one very simple condition: respect for Russia and its citizens, and compliance with the laws of the Russian Federation.”

The Kremlin’s latest offensive relies on a more sophisticated arsenal than the brute force IP-blocking used in 2018. This time around, the authorities would be leveraging “technical means of countering threats”, or TSPUs, specialised hardware boxes for filtering traffic installed on the networks of all major Russian internet providers.

TSPUs allow the state to target specific types of traffic. In August 2025, the Kremlin began throttling encrypted voice calls on Telegram and WhatsApp under the guise of “anti-fraud” measures. By degrading the quality of service rather than cutting it off entirely, censors hope to frustrate users into migrating toward state-monitored alternatives.

Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, responded to the crackdown with a scathing statement. “Russia is restricting access to Telegram in an attempt to force its citizens to switch to a state-controlled app built for surveillance and political censorship,” Durov wrote. “8 years ago, Iran tried the same strategy — and failed. It banned Telegram on made-up pretexts, trying to force people onto a state-run alternative. Despite the ban, most Iranians still use Telegram (bypassing censorship) and prefer it to surveilled apps.”

This seems like an end to the truce established in 2020, when Roskomnadzor officially lifted a previous ban after Durov agreed to assist in “combating terrorism and extremism.” At the time, the retreat was seen as an admission that the Russian state lacked the technical capacity to block the app. However, the “Sovereign Internet” laws have changed the landscape, and deployment of TSPU hardware has given the Kremlin a more robust kill switches that are much harder to circumvent than traditional blocks.