For more than a quarter of a century, a dictatorship has been established in Russia, and during this time the world has changed beyond recognition – there has been a global information revolution. Is there a place for dictatorships in the new global information society? Estonian publicist Andrei Kuzichkin explains how Putin is trying to control the digital environment and online communication, turning Russia into an information ghetto.
The War Has Changed the Principles of the Kremlin’s Information Policy
Vladimir Putin has managed to create a gigantic media empire that includes an ecosystem of television, radio, social networks, and numerous streaming platforms. At the same time, until 2018, foreign media continued to operate relatively freely in Russia’s information space, and the most popular messaging apps among Russians were the foreign Telegram and WhatsApp, as well as the domestic platform VKontakte – each with over 90 million users.
However, preparations for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine changed the principles of the Kremlin’s information policy. A campaign began to ban foreign media resources and social networks not controlled by Putin in order to achieve Russia’s information isolation. This year, the campaign of informational blockade is reaching a new level, and a dense digital curtain may descend between Russia and the outside world.
Declining Trust Ratings for Putin in Russia
The war in Ukraine has become a serious test for Putin’s regime, which proved unprepared for such a prolonged military campaign – one that is consuming enormous material, financial, and human resources. Putin did not expect that the NATO bloc would actively support Ukraine or that Russia would be drawn into a conflict not with a single country, but with several dozen. The military confrontation has led to Russia’s international isolation and the collapse of its symbiotic relationship with Europe.
For several decades, Siberian oil and gas were exchanged in increasing volumes for Western technologies and industrial equipment. Then, suddenly, that relationship ended. Moreover, in addition to attempting to manage the external conflict, the Putin regime has had to open a second front within Russia itself, where an internal conflict has emerged. The lack of success on the Donbas front and worsening economic problems have triggered growing dissatisfaction within Russian society.
Recent polls by the Levada Center show that 72% of Russians still support the actions of the Russian armed forces in Ukraine. However, 67% of Russians now favor urgent peace negotiations – a record high for the entire period of polling. Only 24% support continuing the war – the lowest figure recorded. In addition, interest in events in Ukraine has dropped to 44%, a decrease of 25 percentage points over four years.
Even more sensational data were published in March by the Kremlin-controlled VTsIOM (Russian Public Opinion Research Center): over the past year, Putin’s trust rating has fallen from 48% to 32%, while the rating of United Russia has dropped from 43% to 32%. These figures are alarming for the authorities on the eve of September 20, 2026, when elections for deputies of the Russian State Duma and 39 regional parliaments will be held in the country. Public opinion is the only source of legitimacy for Putin’s power, so the Kremlin cannot allow the consolidation of Russian society around him to collapse.
An Information Ghetto – A Dictator’s Dream
This is precisely why a large-scale hybrid civil war is expanding in Russia, in which the ruling elites, through controlled information and administrative resources, forcibly impose an ideology of militarism, infernal hatred toward Ukraine, and a belief in an existential confrontation between “Holy Rus” and the “decadent West.” For this reason, the narrative that the West intends to destroy Russia, seize all its resources, and enslave Russians has acquired the status of a national idea. Such a threat can indeed unite and mobilize the population to fight an enemy.
But for people to believe in the reality of this threat, it is necessary to completely isolate the country from communication with the outside world and to remove from circulation all opinions except the one “correct” opinion of the leader – Putin. A straightforward ideology that prefers a brain with a single groove tolerates no alternatives. This is the essence of Putinism as both a theory and a practice of building a dictatorship in Russia. The Kremlin junta has decided to finally drive all Russians into an information ghetto. To achieve this, it is trying to strip not only bloggers and the opposition of freedom, but the entire internet as well.
The Fate of Telegram in Russia
By now, everyone knows that Russia is a country of revived absurdity, where Kafka and Orwell would be mere apprentices to “Master” Putin. Thus, Roskomnadzor (Russia’s media regulator) first demands that foreign digital platforms provide the personal data of their users in Russia and, upon refusal, restricts the operation of messaging services, citing violations of personal data protection laws.
In 2022, Roskomnadzor, by court decision, blocked Instagram and Facebook (both owned by the American company Meta, which is designated an extremist organization and banned in Russia). In 2024, YouTube began to be throttled in Russia, with video load times increasing sharply. In August 2025, Roskomnadzor announced restrictions on calls in Telegram and WhatsApp. In November 2025, the agency reported that it had begun systematically introducing restrictive measures against WhatsApp.
The first attempts to restrict Telegram, one of the most popular messaging apps among Russians, were made as early as 2018. The platform’s owner and creator, Pavel Durov, has categorically refused to cooperate with Russian security services and was forced to emigrate from Russia in 2014. As a result, Telegram fell out of favor with the Russian authorities.
However, this did not prevent it from becoming a communication tool that united the Russian-language opposition with Russian nationalists, public organizations with government structures, and the anti-war movement with supporters of the war in Ukraine. In 2020, the restrictions were lifted. And in 2022, Telegram became the most in-demand platform among Russian military “Z-bloggers,” who created hundreds of channels with millions of subscribers.
Telegram was used to publish content about the course of combat, to collect donations, and to maintain communication between military units at the front. Incidentally, Ukrainian fighters use Telegram for the same purposes. In addition, Telegram is an effective tool for collecting and exchanging intelligence information and for recruiting agents behind enemy lines.
However, in 2025, an information campaign against Telegram began in Russia. Security services accused the messenger of being used by the Armed Forces of Ukraine and NATO intelligence to determine the coordinates of Russian military units, track the movements of officers, and carry out strikes on military targets. Active discussion began in the media sphere about the possibility of a complete blocking of Telegram starting April 1, 2026.
This caused a real hysteria among “Z-bloggers,” who risk losing a huge audience of subscribers not only in Russia. This threatens a reduction in donations and other support for Russian servicemen. After Elon Musk disabled Starlink in Donbas, the quality of operational communication at the front for Russian forces significantly deteriorated. Blocking Telegram would further worsen the situation.
Deputies of the Russian State Duma, leaders of some parliamentary factions, experts, and government officials spoke out against a complete ban on the messenger. In many Russian cities, applications were submitted to hold protests against blocking Telegram. However, all of them were banned by local authorities under various, sometimes highly absurd, pretexts.
For example, in Khabarovsk, the authorities initially approved a protest rally scheduled for March 6, 2026, in a park in the city center. But a day before the event, the park was closed due to an alleged accident in the heating network and repair work – although people continued to walk freely in the park that day, and no construction equipment was seen.
Vladimir Putin personally intervened in the situation and invited female military personnel to a meeting, among whom was Irina Godunova, a communications battalion commander from Donbas. The Russian president subjected her to what amounted to an interrogation, demanding that she answer whether enemies could use foreign messaging apps against Russia and whether disabling these channels would harm communication between soldiers at the front. She replied briskly that the enemy would not prevail and that all such “hostile” messaging apps like Telegram should have long since been shut down and replaced with Russian ones – then communication would be excellent.
Incidentally, Irina Godunova herself actively used Telegram and posted her stories there until July 2025. The Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service interpreted the “dialogue” correctly and immediately banned the placement of advertising by Russian residents on Telegram. This measure will affect all bloggers and will deal a blow to Russian small and medium-sized businesses, which are already going through difficult times.
Against the backdrop of all these developments, a blockade of Telegram in Russia appears inevitable. But nature abhors a vacuum. As a “sweet pill” and a new digital idol for public devotion, Putin has prepared a national messenger for Russians – MAX.
Internet Communication Under Surveillance
In principle, the Putin regime is not offering anything new: blocking foreign digital platforms and replacing them with national messengers has already occurred in countries such as China and Iran. In China, the WeChat messenger was created, and in Iran – Soroush.
In China, the project proved quite successful, since a market of a billion users allows the platform to be filled with diverse content and makes it competitive. In Iran, however, the project failed, as it was unable to withstand competition from Telegram, which had been blocked as early as 2018.
As independent monitoring has shown, official statistics overstate the number of users of Iran’s Soroush several times over; in reality, there are no more than 12 million users, compared to 45 million Telegram users. The use of VPN applications allows Iranian residents to bypass the blocking successfully.
A scenario similar to the Iranian one is now unfolding with Russia’s MAX. The state is forcibly imposing this messenger on users. All public-sector organizations in Russia – government bodies, the army, schools, hospitals, cultural institutions, universities, and research institutes – are being compelled to use only this application. Transport companies, service providers, and residential property management organizations are also being required to switch to MAX.
Official statistics claim that by March 2026, the number of MAX users in Russia had exceeded 73 million. At the same time, the number of Telegram users, according to various estimates, ranges from 80 to 90 million, while WhatsApp has around 60 million users. However, the new Russian messenger is already experiencing various incidents.
It was created under the pretext of protecting Russians from the machinations of Western intelligence services and various fraudsters. MAX was declared the most reliable means of communication. And then… In my native Tomsk region, there is the northern Kargasok District. Just recently, a message appeared on the official account of the district administration on the VKontakte platform from the police about a “mass hacking of the digital platform MAX,” in which fraudsters managed to deploy a virus granting remote access to residents’ accounts.
This information spread instantly across public pages and social media, with many commentators sharing their own stories of how their accounts on MAX had been hacked. But the message from the administration’s website suddenly disappeared: no message – no problem.
Experts also report that MAX contains a module that allows it to automatically activate a phone’s camera, record information about connections to Telegram and WhatsApp, and track VPN usage – which in Russia is already classified as a violation of the law. Few in Russia doubt that the country’s security services use MAX to monitor users. As an alternative, many people purchase two phones: one with MAX installed and another for all other messaging apps. I have many contacts in Russia, and for now we use Telegram and WhatsApp to stay in touch.
Recently, images on WhatsApp have begun to load slowly, but text messages and even calls are still going through; for some users, the messenger works perfectly even without a VPN. Telegram, for now, has no problems at all. Even on Facebook – banned in Russia as a “terrorist resource” – I continue to communicate with my Russian friends. From this, one can conclude that, for now, the Russian authorities are losing to digital technologies: you cannot force a person to be happy by depriving them of the ability to communicate with the world.
The original article was published on Postimees.
Also read on PostPravda.info: Putin’s New Imperial Project – Assimilation of Ukrainians and the Canceling of Ukrainian Heritage
