The Mess With Max, Telegram, And More: Russians' Patience Tested By Online Troubles

WhatsApp is throttled. Telegram is about to be blocked. Soldiers are angry. Max, a state-backed messenger app, is being forced on everyone. Commanders warn Max is unsafe. Average Russians are trying to avoid it.

Oh, and mobile Internet is being turned off everywhere, so in 21st-century modern Moscow, you can't hail a taxi, order food delivery, or even look at an online map.

In the plugged-in, very online, mobile-wired Russian capital -- not to mention many towns and cities around the country -- the Internet, along with the apps that Russians rely on for daily life, is breaking down.

Ask the Kremlin how they're dealing with it:

"We're using land lines," spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Ask average Russians how they're dealing with it:

"They all have cars with special police lights, and we can't even call a taxi or order carsharing," said Maksim, who asked that only his first name be used, describing the widely hated flashing lights used by government officials to avoid Moscow's infamous traffic.

Earlier this month, Maksim said, he was late to work as he commuted from the suburb of Zelenograd because of the Internet outages in downtown Moscow.

"There was absolutely no service. So I took a commuter train, then the subway, and then had to walk almost 2 kilometers to our warehouse," he told RFE/RL's Siberia.Realities. "I couldn't even pay to rent an electric scooter."

Russia's online world is being roiled by a series of major crosscurrents, most of which are the result of government regulators and the country's main security agencies seeking to impose tighter control over everyday citizens: what they read, what they watch, what they share, what they order, how they pay.

Pretty much everything they do online.

"A significant portion of Muscovites are accustomed to a very comfortable Internet experience, accustomed to living in cozy Telegram channels and communicating via a very convenient messenger. Now Muscovites are being kicked out of this rather comfortable environment," Igor Yakovenko, a Russian sociologist, told RFE/RL's Russian Service.

"The Kremlin is trying to make the Russian Internet into a closed ecosystem, where all the important services are controlled and accessible" to the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russian commentator Maria Kolymchenko wrote in an article for the Berlin-based Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. "If there are foreign platforms that haven't been blocked yet, it's only because there's no viable domestic alternative yet."

What's Going On

The crosscurrents come from a series of policy moves spearheaded by state tech regulator Roskomnadzor, with the backing of the Kremlin.

The first has to do with messaging apps.

For several years, regulators have been working with Russian tech-industry leaders to build replacements for the two most popular messengers for Russians, namely WhatsApp, which is owned by the parent of Facebook, and Telegram, which is owned by the exiled tech entrepreneur Pavel Durov.

Roskomnadzor has been gradually throttling the two apps, slowing them down to make them unusable. The agency has been taking similar steps with YouTube, which is the most popular video streaming service in the country and owned by the parent of Google.

Russian news reports say Telegram may be completely blocked within the country as of April 1.

At the same time, authorities have been promoting an alternative messenger that was built by VK, the social media giant whose top executives include Kremlin-linked officials.

That app, called Messenger Max, was rolled out last year with public backing from President Vladimir Putin. Since then, state-run and state-aligned media organizations have been promoting it aggressively.

Local authorities have also leaned heavily on Russians to switch. As of September, upcoming new mobile devices purchased in Russia will have to have Max pre-installed. Last week, a Moscow university announced it would not award diplomas to graduating students unless they install Max.

"Russia is restricting access to Telegram to force its citizens onto a state-controlled app built for surveillance and political censorship," Durov said in a post to X last month.

But Russians are resisting the switch and looking for creative ways to dodge installing it on their mobile devices.

Telegram, meanwhile, is widely used not only by Russian civilians but also by soldiers deployed to Ukraine, along with the so-called Z Bloggers who use Telegram to amplify war propaganda and raise money for themselves and military units.

Telegram's throttling -- tightened further by reports that commanders have ordered it completely deleted from soldiers' phones -- has prompted open grumbling from troops and their public supporters.

"Who is slowing down Telegram?" Sergei Mironov, a prominent lawmaker, said in angry speech last month. "Go out to the front, to the [war]. The guys who are shedding blood -- their only connection with their families and friends is through Telegram. What are you doing, idiots? I'm calling a spade a spade. Idiots! What are you doing?"

Adding further frustration, Russian commanders have banned the use of Max on soldiers' phones, citing security concerns with the app, according to several prominent pro-war Telegram channels.

"All this cacophony around Telegram is ridiculous. Ridiculous. We are simply working against our own people, making their lives worse," said Andrei Bezrukov, a well-known former Russian foreign intelligence "sleeper" agent who now teaches at a Moscow university.

"During a rather difficult period for the country, we are trying to, how can I put it -- annoy a large percentage of our population, who naturally are for victory [in the Ukraine war] and only want the best," he said in a video interview.

Lawmakers in February passed new legislation giving FSB and other police and security agencies the power to order mobile operators to cut off any client if needed.

'Can't Even Reach Loved Ones'

On top of all this are the mobile Internet outages, which began inconveniencing millions of Muscovites around March 6.

In other border regions, authorities justified temporary outages as necessary measures to thwart Ukrainian drones, which frequently rely on local cell phone networks for guidance. Several days after Moscow disruptions began, Peskov said the measures were "in the interest of security," without providing details.

Some Russians vented their outrage with the outages on International Women's Day, posting directly to Roskomnadzor's VK page below the agency's well-wishes for the holiday, which is widely cerebrated in Russia.

"Thanks for shutting off the Internet on March 8 -- what a gift! Can't even reach loved ones to congratulate them," one user wrote.

The economic fallout from the outages was considerable, according to the newspaper Kommersant, which estimated losses for Moscow businesses at between 3 billion and 5 billion rubles ($35 million to $58 million) over the first five days of the outages. Hardest hit were retailers, food delivery and courier services, and carsharing operations.

Russians in other major cities have experienced mobile outages for months now. Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a Pacific coast peninsula city that is more than 7,200 kilometers from Ukraine, reported disruptions last June, as did Irkutsk, in Siberia, where locals evinced little sympathy for Muscovites.

"Well, now they'll feel our pain," said one Irkutsk woman who gave her first name as Natalya.

"In June, they started slowing down our Internet, at the end of the year there was a complete blockade, and now the situation is such that it can be blocked at any moment, for several days or weeks," she told RFE/RL's Siberia.Realities. "Even when the network is working, the speed is very slow -- we can't send video or audio."

The confusion, and frustration, has drawn wry responses from Ukraine, where Telegram, WhatsApp, and the Internet are unfettered.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a comic actor in his previous career, trolled Putin over the Internet outages.

"This is, you know, a step backward, a step 100 years back," he told reporters last week. "They might as well switch to paper mail, telegrams, and horses soon. That's the kind of civilization they have. Perhaps Putin even likes it. Maybe that is how he feels young again."