Russia’s most popular messaging app, Telegram, has largely stopped working inside the country, according to user reports on outage-tracking websites.
The number of complaints on Downdetector and Sboi.rf began rising over the weekend. Users say the messenger isn’t working “in any form”: the app won’t open, messages can’t be sent, and photos and videos won’t load. Reports have come from regions across the country, with the highest numbers in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the surrounding Moscow region.
Data from Sboi.rf cited by the newspaper Kommersant show that nearly 6,000 complaints about Telegram were filed on Saturday, followed by about 12,000 on Sunday.
Experts interviewed by the outlet said the authorities appear to have begun blocking the service. According to Vladislav Voytenko, a writer for the tech publication Kod Durova, Telegram has effectively stopped working over home Internet connections in the past 24 hours. “You can forget about using Telegram over mobile Internet,” he added. Voytenko also said that if access in a given city is limited to websites on a government “whitelist,” “most VPN services won’t help you access Telegram.”
Alexey Amelkin, president of the Makatel Cable Television Operators’ Association, said the slowdown had been underway for some time, but only recently did users begin reporting that the desktop version of the messenger had also stopped working.