Russians have resorted to various technical solutions to circumvent state monitoring and restrictions on popular foreign apps, such as Meta's WhatsApp and the Telegram messaging app founded by Russian Pavel Durov.
In a quiet cafe known for free Wi-Fi and good coffee, an interior designer from Russia connects to a virtual private network (VPN) so he can chat with friends abroad using the WhatsApp service, which is blocked in Russia, writes Reuters.
Later, she disables the VPN to buy a ticket on the Russian Railways website, which denies access to those using digital tools to hide their location. He then picks up a second phone to check messages from customers on the state-controlled MAX app.
The biggest crackdown of its kind since Vladimir Putin's presidency has at times disrupted banking, transport and e-commerce, angering the population ahead of parliamentary elections in September, according to statements from pro-Kremlin opposition parties, prominent bloggers and business leaders. Even some social media influencers, who usually steer clear of politics, criticized the restrictions.
Putin's popularity, declining
Frustration over restrictions — along with rising prices, tax hikes and war fatigue — is believed to have contributed to Putin's approval rating, which fell from 75.1 percent in February to 65.6 percent in April, according to state polling institute VTsIOM, the lowest level since full-scale conflict in Ukraine erupted in 2022. It now stands at nearly 67 percent.
Officials have urged Russians to use state-backed alternatives to foreign apps and websites in a campaign for “digital sovereignty”. But some users are wary following warnings from critics of the Kremlin and some Western tech companies that MAX could be used to track them, which tech giant VK, the app's owner, denies.
Isolate the app to a second phone seems safer, said Irina, the 41-year-old interior designer.
“Of course this is all a big nuisance, but what else can we do?” she said, asking to be identified only by her first name because of the sensitivity of the subject.
“You get used to it and spend your days toggling VPNs on and off, switching between different messaging apps and switching between different virtual countries or phones to use the apps and websites you need,” she recounted.
VPN downloads, on the rise
VPNs work by redirecting the user's internet connection through private servers outside of Russia. In March alone, there were 9.2 million downloads of the five most popular VPN services on the Google Play store, 14 times more than in the same month last year, Russian daily Kommersant reported, citing data from Digital Budget, a Moscow-based consulting firm that monitors online behavior.
“I've never seen such a rate of use,” said Sarkis Darbinian, a Russian internet freedom activist based in Lisbon.
Moscow has designated Darbinian as a “foreign agent,” a term it applies to people it considers involved in anti-Russian activities.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has repeatedly said the Internet controls are necessary as Russia finds itself in what officials describe as an existential confrontation with the West over Ukraine. In April, however, Putin directed the government to take a more moderate approach, telling lawmakers it was “counterproductive” to “focus exclusively on bans and restrictions.”
Connections to some apps and websites, slowed down
Although many authoritarian countries impose strict limits on Internet use, Russians had become accustomed to a certain degree of online freedom. Security services have long tried to silence domestic critics, but authorities rarely interfered with people's ability to use foreign apps or access Western media before the war in Ukraine.
Since last year, the FSB security service, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB, has ordered telecommunications companies to shut down mobile internet for several days in regions across Russia, saying Ukrainian attack drones can use it to facilitate their navigation.
Authorities also blocked or slowed connections to a growing list of apps and websites that communications regulator Roskomnadzor said were platforms for illegal and extremist content.
WhatsApp and Telegram have accused Russia of trying to force people to use less secure, government-mandated apps like MAX.
Officials use VPNs too
The disruption intensified in March with a nearly three-week blackout in Moscow that angered senior bureaucrats who need the Internet and Telegram to drum up votes for the ruling United Russia party, according to two sources close to the Kremlin and analysts.
Even government-loyal officials download VPNs and have multiple phones to keep government-backed apps like MAX separate from the rest of their digital lives, the sources told Reuters.
Some are even removing the microphone and camera from devices with MAX installed in case the FSB could gain access to them, a source said.
“Even if you don't intend to do anything wrong, nobody wants the FSB to read your messages,” the source said.
Putin's special envoy Kirill Dmitriev makes no attempt to hide his VPN use, posting regularly on X, which cannot be accessed in Russia without one.
Although the use of VPNs is not illegal, Roskomnadzor has restricted access to hundreds of them, triggering a cat-and-mouse game with users who have to constantly download new services to access the content they want.
More and more Russians admit to using VPNs
In April, government institutions, banks and major online retailers – acting on the regulator's instructions – began blocking access to their sites from people who had a VPN enabled. The move coincided with a 10 percent drop in Internet traffic for Wildberries, the Russian equivalent of Amazon, according to Digital Budget.
“Many users don't turn off their VPN to access the site and simply lose interest in making a purchase if they can't open the product page,” Digital Budget said in a Telegram post.
The percentage of Russians who admit to using a VPN rose from 23 percent in 2022 to 36 percent this year, according to the Levada Center, a non-governmental polling institute that is on Moscow's foreign agent list.
Amid growing frustrations, the Kremlin has moderated its rhetoric in recent weeks, assuring the public that mobile internet blockages are temporary.
A plan for mobile service providers to charge customers an extra fee for using more than 15GB of data abroad in a month was delayed in May, Russian media reported, saying the requirement targeting VPN users was likely to be introduced after the election.
But interior designer Irina doesn't expect her digital life to get any easier anytime soon. “In Russia, we have a saying: nothing is more permanent than the temporary,” she said.
