Russia’s FSB searches phones and YouTube watch histories of Tajik and Uzbek nationals at airports, denying some entry, Ostorozhno Novosti reports

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) is conducting “filtering” checks at airports that target citizens of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, denying entry to some of them, according to the Russian Telegram news channel Ostorozhno Novosti, which reviewed nine court rulings on the refusal of entry to foreigners.

According to the court documents, the “filtering” at the border included questioning and a phone check, and foreigners reportedly handed over their phones to FSB officers voluntarily. The outcome of the check determined whether they were allowed into the country.

During the “filtering,” Russian security service representatives checked, among other things, foreigners’ YouTube viewing histories and found “videos of preachers banned in the Russian Federation.”

Other reasons cited for denying entry included the deletion of messenger correspondence and, in one case, presenting a basic push-button phone.

In court, the FSB said that all those named in the case could be classified as “adherents of the ideology of radical Islam,” Ostorozhno Novosti reported.

A wave of inspections at Moscow airports began in spring 2024, after the terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall concert venue, the Russian Telegram news channel Ostorozhno Novosti notes. In summer 2025, the Russian state news agency TASS reported, also citing court rulings, that border guards were denying entry into Russia to citizens of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan if they found they were following “terrorist and extremist” organizations’ social media pages on their phones. Ukrainians, and sometimes Russians, returning to the country from abroad are subjected to the same “filtering” checks.