In a fully wired 21st century city like Moscow, replying to a friend’s message, ordering a pizza, or hailing a ride on your mobile device may seem like a simple task. But residents of the Russian capital are finding their smartphones less functional due to an unprecedented mobile internet shutdown.
Russia has implemented digital censorship for years, banning social media apps such as Facebook and Instagram. However, since early March, Moscow has experienced internet and mobile service outages at levels never experienced before. Residents of the capital city of 13 million people are frustrated that they can’t get around the city center or use their favorite mobile apps. The disruption appears to have had the knock-on effect of making it more difficult to make voice calls and send SMS. Some people panic-buy walkie-talkies, paper maps, and even pagers.
The closures follow similar efforts across the country. In recent months, mobile internet service disruptions have hit Russia’s regions, especially those bordering Ukraine, which has begun planning and launching attacks into Russian territory to counter a full-scale Russian invasion. It has been reported that mobile internet has been unavailable in some areas since summer.
But recent power outages hit Moscow, the country’s center of wealth and power, and Russia’s second city, St. Petersburg. Government officials say the blackout of mobile internet services in the capital and other regions is part of a security effort to counter “increasingly sophisticated methods” of attacks on Ukraine.
Unlike Iran, where authorities have imposed a total blackout, the internet has not been completely shut down in Russia. In places like the capital, Russians can access it via Wi-Fi. Some Russians are responding with humor on the internet topic. Social media is full of jokes and memes about sending letters with carrier pigeons and using smartphones as ping pong paddles. However, the service interruption also had a serious impact on real life.
“I feel like the ground is being pulled out from under my feet,” said Svetlana, who lives on the outskirts of Moscow. Svetlana relies on continuous data to monitor the blood sugar levels of her 8-year-old diabetic son, Vanya. She uses the messaging app Telegram to send him detailed instructions on the required insulin doses.
“These internet restrictions are so illogical,” said Svetlana, who asked that her last name not be used for privacy reasons. “For years, even years, even decades, we have been told that the internet and digitization are so cool and so important, that everything should be online, that we have e-government services, that everything is going electronic… and then suddenly everything that we have built, that we have been encouraged to rely on, is restricted… No one understands why or for what purpose.”
Speculation has centered on whether authorities are testing their ability to crack down on popular protests in case there are efforts to reintroduce unpopular mobilization measures to secure new personnel for the Ukraine war. Whether mobile internet outages are likely to precede larger digital blackouts. Or do the new restrictions reflect growing fear and paranoia within the Kremlin as it watches U.S.-led regime change efforts unfold against Russia’s allies such as Venezuela and Iran?
In a report published just days before the mobile internet outage in Moscow, the US-based think tank Institute for War Studies touched on several theories about the push for further digital restrictions over the coming months.
“The Kremlin may now be accelerating its internet censorship campaign to pre-empt domestic backlash and isolate the regime ahead of future decisions that are likely to be unpopular at home,” the study says.
“A successful internet censorship campaign could minimize the risk of high-profile demonstrations or the formation of new civil society groups outside the Kremlin’s control.”
Mikhail Klimarev, a Russian internet freedom expert and head of the Internet Protection Association, said Russia appears to be moving to a model of repeated, targeted disruptions and service degradation rather than one-off nationwide blackouts.
He said industries that rely on e-commerce, such as delivery services, taxis and retail stores, will be hit hardest by the restrictions.
Russian mobile providers sent a notice on Wednesday announcing “temporary restrictions” on mobile internet in parts of Moscow for security reasons, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on March 11 that the measures would continue “as long as additional measures are necessary to ensure the safety of the population.”
The potential cost to your business can be high. The shutdown of mobile internet in Moscow for less than a week could have cost businesses an estimated 3 billion to 5 billion rubles ($34.8 million to $58 million), business newspaper Kommersant said.
Some Muscovites expressed despair. Leonid, a 34-year-old IT sales manager in Moscow whose name has been changed by CNN due to safety concerns, spoke of growing anxiety over the restrictions, saying they hurt his ability to do his job.
“I understand that if they (the authorities) really manage to block both the VPN (virtual private network) and Telegram, we will have to leave the country, but we don’t know for how long,” he said.
In addition to banning many social media platforms, Russia has also blocked the calling functionality of messenger apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram. The country’s communications regulator Roskomnadzor has introduced a “whitelist” of approved apps, but Klimarev said the selection process was opaque. Russia is also testing what it calls a “sovereign internet,” a network that is effectively firewalled from the rest of the world.
The turmoil has raised widespread concerns about increased state control. In parallel with the internet shutdown, the Kremlin is also pushing to introduce a state-controlled messaging app called Max as the country’s main portal for state services, payments, and daily communications.
There is speculation that the Kremlin is planning to completely ban Telegram, Russia’s most widely used messaging app. Roskomnadzor said it was restricting Telegram for not complying with Russian law.
“Russia has filed a criminal case against me for ‘facilitating terrorism,'” Telegram’s Russian-born founder Pavel Durov told X last month. “Every day, the authorities are inventing new excuses to restrict Russians’ access to Telegram in an attempt to suppress their rights to privacy and freedom of speech. A sad picture of a nation afraid of its own people.”
Internet freedom expert Klimarev said the Russian government theoretically has the technical ability to shut down or shut down the internet. He speculated that a complete internet shutdown could be triggered by a variety of triggers, including a major escalation of the war in Ukraine or an economic collapse.
“In any situation, if they (the authorities) perceive any danger to themselves and accept the belief that the Internet is dangerous to them, they will shut down the Internet, even if that is not true,” he said. “Just like in Iran.”
