Russia Sees Widespread Telegram Outages in Crackdown

Users across Russia reported widespread outages and slowdowns on the Telegram messaging app starting over the weekend and intensifying on Monday, prompting concerns over a government-led crackdown on the platform. The disruptions affected millions in major cities including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Samara, Tyumen, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, and Rostov, with many unable to access the app or its web version without a virtual private network.

The issues varied by location and connection type. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, mobile users frequently encountered complete blackouts, while desktop access over WiFi sometimes worked but with dramatically reduced speeds for loading media like photos, videos, and voice notes. One resident in St. Petersburg described needing a VPN to open the mobile app, noting that without it, connections failed entirely. In the Saratov region, channels loaded after about 20 seconds on WiFi, but mobile internet proved unreliable. Tech analyst Vladislav Voytenko stated that Telegram had "effectively stopped working through some providers" for Russian IP addresses, adding that mobile access was "basically impossible" without circumvention tools.