Putin’s digital crackdown is disrupting daily life and angering Russians
Russia’s sweeping push to tighten control over the internet is upending daily life for citizens and businesses, while also fueling public anger. According to Reuters, Moscow is blocking popular Western apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram to steer users toward the state-backed MAX platform, and it is also trying to restrict VPN services. The result, the report says, is a daily “digital nightmare” for both private users and the commercial sector.
The state regulator Roskomnadzor’s new restrictions are hitting banks, transport and online commerce. People can use VPNs to bypass blocks and communicate abroad, but those same connections are then refused when they try to buy train tickets or log in to bank accounts. Retail giant Wildberries, Russia’s Amazon equivalent, saw internet traffic fall 10% immediately, while a Digital Budget survey found many users simply give up if a homepage will not open with VPN enabled.
The crackdown comes as official polling shows Vladimir Putin’s approval has dropped to 67% from 75.1% in February, its lowest level since the war in Ukraine began in 2022. Kommersant reported 9.2 million downloads in March of the five most popular VPN apps from Google’s store, 14 times more than a year earlier. Even insiders are said to rely on VPNs, with Kremlin-linked officials and Putin envoy Kirill Dmitriev still using the blocked X platform. Some officials reportedly carry two phones, one for MAX, and even remove microphones and cameras from them out of fear of FSB surveillance.
The internet squeeze has intensified over the past year, including multi-day shutdowns of mobile networks in several regions, officially justified as a way to stop Ukrainian suicide drones from navigating. In Moscow, the internet was largely paralyzed for almost three weeks in March, disrupting courier services and boosting sales of paper maps. The Kremlin says it wants full “digital sovereignty,” while Meta and Telegram accuse Moscow of trying to force users onto MAX to make it easier for security services to monitor conversations and silence dissent. Putin has urged more flexibility, calling bans alone “a step against productivity,” and a plan to charge heavy users extra for more than 15 GB of foreign data a month was postponed in May, with more measures likely delayed until after September elections.
