WhatsApp accuses Russia of blocking requires over 100 million customers amid web crackdown – Firstpost

WhatsApp accused Moscow of attempting to dam hundreds of thousands of Russians from accessing safe communication after calls on the messaging app have been restricted, as Russia promotes home-grown social media platforms and seeks higher management over the nation’s web house.

Russia mentioned on Wednesday that it had began limiting some WhatsApp, owned by Meta Platforms, and Telegram calls, accusing the foreign-owned platforms of failing to share info with legislation enforcement in fraud and terrorism circumstances.

Textual content messaging companies and voice notes are at present unaffected.

A simmering dispute with overseas tech suppliers intensified after Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with Russia blocking Meta’s Fb and Instagram, slowing the velocity of Alphabet’s YouTube and issuing lots of of fines to platforms that did not adjust to Russian guidelines on on-line content material and information storage.

“WhatsApp is non-public, end-to-end encrypted, and defies authorities makes an attempt to violate folks’s proper to safe communication, which is why Russia is attempting to dam it from over 100 million Russian folks,” WhatsApp mentioned late on Wednesday, vowing to proceed attempting to maintain encrypted companies obtainable in Russia.

Telegram mentioned it actively combats the dangerous use of its platform, together with requires sabotage or violence and fraud, and that moderators use AI instruments to take away hundreds of thousands of malicious messages every single day.

In July 2025, WhatsApp’s month-to-month attain in Russia was 97.3 million folks, in comparison with 90.8 million for Telegram, in response to Mediascope information. Third-placed VK Messenger, an providing from state-controlled tech firm VK, reached 17.9 million folks.

Russia has a inhabitants of greater than 140 million folks.

On-line monitoring companies Downdetector and Sboy reported surges in web customers complaining about poor WhatsApp performance. In Krasnodar, a area in southern Russia, native media additionally reported a drop off in cellular connectivity.

A public Telegram group of Krasnodar taxi drivers was inundated on Thursday with complaints about poor cellular connectivity, with many drivers unable to make use of on-line maps to navigate round.

“What ought to I do, there’s no map,” a driver named Sergei requested the three,700 others within the discussion board.

“Obtain offline maps,” Alexei, one other driver, advised. “For the longer term.”

Regular degradation

Russia banning WhatsApp and Telegram customers from making calls comes as the federal government is actively selling a brand new state-controlled messaging app, MAX, that can be built-in with authorities companies and which critics concern might monitor its customers’ actions.

Senior politicians are migrating to MAX, urging their followers to return with them.

Anton Gorelkin, a number one regulator of Russia’s IT sector in parliament, mentioned he would publish to his MAX followers first and mentioned many different lawmakers would quickly observe go well with.

“Finally, they need to management customers and the data they obtain,” mentioned Mikhail Klimarev, director of the Web Safety Society, a Russian digital rights group.

However MAX could not address an enormous inflow, Klimarev advised Reuters, so a gradual adoption is preferable. And there’s additionally a social consideration.

“Modifications are by no means welcome,” Klimarev advised Reuters. “Folks don’t like being pressured to register someplace (new).”

WhatsApp’s different companies stay obtainable for now, however the regular degradation of a service is a tactic Russia has employed earlier than, notably with YouTube, the place slower obtain speeds have made it more durable for folks to entry content material.

Human Rights Watch mentioned in a report final month that Russia has been “meticulously increasing [its] authorized and technological instruments to carve out Russia’s part of the web right into a tightly managed and remoted discussion board”.

Lawmakers have authorized a brand new legislation that tightens censorship and will have sweeping ramifications for digital privateness, with Russians dealing with fines in the event that they search on-line for content material Moscow considers “extremist”, together with through digital non-public networks that hundreds of thousands use to bypass web blocks.