Russia’s effective censor, Roskomnadzor has confirmed that calls on both WhatsApp and Telegram are to be blocked, with this yet another step towards creating a total information blockade in occupied parts of Ukraine. WhatsApp reacted swiftly, dismissing Russia’s attempt to present the blocking as about ‘fighting crime’, and stating that Russia is trying to block it as WhatsApp “defies government attempts to violate people’s right to secure communication”.
The official line from Moscow is that WhatsApp and Telegram are failing to share information with Russian enforcement agencies in fraud and ‘terrorism’ cases. One need only consider Russia’s dismal track record since 2014 in using ‘terrorism’ charges as a weapon of political and / or religious persecution against Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian political prisoners, as well, since 2022, against Ukrainian prisoners of war to understand why the demand for data sharing has little, if anything, to do with fighting real crime.
RIA-South reports that for occupied Melitopol, this is “a blow to the last thread of contact”, with the same almost certainly true of all occupied territory. Although for the moment, written messages will not be blocked, it will no longer be possible to speak with relatives and friends in free Ukraine, or abroad. This is a blow for personal reasons, given the near impossibility of seeing loved ones, but not only. Russia is aggressively imposing all types of surveillance on Ukrainians on occupied territory, and phones can easily get inspected, with written messages used against the person. Ordinary phone calls are prohibitively expensive, but also easily tapped. It was WhatsApp and Telegram that provided private communications, after Russia blocked Signal and Viber in December 2024. The publication notes that there were also restrictions on access to Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, as well as YouTube.
It seems that occupied Melitopol has the additional problem that VPNs, which can be used to bypass restrictions, work extremely badly, with the connection constantly breaking off or the speed radically reduced.
The timing of this latest crackdown is probably no accident, coming shortly after Russian leader Vladimir Putin signed into law amendments which both criminalize Internet searches for what the Russian regimes claims are ‘extremist’ material, and puts further clamps on the use of VPNs. While the use of VPNs, has not officially been banned altogether, the regime clearly wants to restrict their use as they enable people to bypass Russian attempts to impose an information blockade. While the penalties imposed in the new law signed on 31 July 2025 for ‘Internet searches of knowingly extremist material’ are fairly small, the fines for using VPNs to access ‘prohibited material’ are huge. Any attempts to bypass blocks on sites by using VPNs will bring persecution, with providers themselves legally obliged to provide the FSB and other enforcement bodies with technical data and the geolocation of their subscribers.
Russia is systematically blocking any access to truthful information about what is happening, with the above methods coinciding with its huge drive in producing propaganda media presenting its ‘official’ version of its war of aggression against Ukraine, current events and history.
The Guardian reports that “Putin has authorised the development of a state-backed messaging app integrated with government services, as Moscow seeks to establish what it calls digital sovereignty by promoting homegrown services and reducing its dependence on foreign-owned platforms.”
The aggressor state is endeavouring to foist this supposed ‘digital sovereignty’, via measures to block uncensored communications and information resources, on illegally seized and occupied Ukrainian territory, with the majority of ‘foreign’’ sources which it is blocking being Ukrainian.
