Russia appears to intensify YouTube throttling, possibly in connection with Putin’s year-end press conference

Russian Internet users have increasingly complained in recent days about difficulties accessing YouTube on mobile devices. A source from one of the country’s telecom operators confirmed to Meduza and The Bell that there’s been a significant increase in complaints beginning on December 18.

“The number of complaints began to rise around 9:00 p.m., and they’re still continuing today. Previously, there were about 10,000 complaints a day after the slowdown, but now the number has exceeded 40,000 per day,” the person said.

The source suggested that the heightened "slowdown" might be linked to Vladimir Putin’s live call-in show on Thursday.

A source from the Russian media market told the newspaper RBC that “there was a 30 percent block only on desktops earlier, but since mid-December, restrictions have intensified, and now the entire service, including the mobile version, will be blocked.” Another source confirmed the “serious but not yet complete shutdown of YouTube on mobile devices.”

The outage detection services Sboi.rf and Downdetector also show an increase in complaints about YouTube’s performance in Russia. The Bell, citing Google’s open statistics, noted that YouTube traffic in Russia on December 18 was already 20 percent lower than the numbers from December 17. Compared to July 24, when the throttling began, the decline has surpassed 60 percent.

IT specialist Mikhail Klimarev told Meduza that since the past weekend, users from various Russian regions have reported issues using YouTube on mobile networks.

On Thursday evening, Russia’s federal censorship agency Roskomnadzor told state media that YouTube access has declined in Russia because Google “has not officially operated in Russia for two years, choosing instead to have its Russian subsidiary go through the bankruptcy process and ceasing to support the infrastructure of its caching servers in our networks.” The agency added that “numerous violations of Russian legislation and disrespect for our country and citizens are grounds for taking action against YouTube” and that it has “enough tools to motivate the company in this situation, and the right to use them remains with the Russian side.”