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Moscow is experiencing mass mobile internet blackouts as authorities step up their campaign to control the internet, causing businesses multibillion-rouble losses and disrupting public services.
Central Moscow has been suffering outages since March 5, with average daily mobile internet traffic dropping about 20 per cent compared to the previous month, follows from data from a monitoring centre of Russian internet watchdog Roskomnadzor. Sales of walkie-talkies, pagers and landline phones have surged, according to local media.
“I drive through the Sadovoye Ring, and boom — there is no connection, there is no GPS,” said Sergey, 33, a project manager, referring to the ring road encircling central Moscow.
The move marks a new phase in the Kremlin’s campaign against internet freedom, which has gathered pace as the state sought to sever Russians from the global web by banning popular messaging apps and social media. Russian regions have already been experiencing cut-offs.
The Kremlin has acknowledged the outages but has offered little detail about their cause. Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov attributed it to “systemic safety measures”, adding that authorities would maintain them “as long as necessary”, without any further explanation.
The blackouts took the capital by surprise, marking a stark contrast with the state’s projected image of the capital as a city untouched by Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which is in its fifth year.
Initially, mobile internet was almost completely cut off in central Moscow, but a week later, some government-approved websites, including major public services, banks, marketplaces and Kremlin-loyal media, became accessible — known as a ‘‘whitelist’’.
Muscovites are being advised by state media to carry cash to avoid problems with card payments and to make a phone call to order a taxi, pushing daily life back by several decades.
A State Duma deputy proposed installing “payphones with internet access”, while a state news agency quoted scientists from a local university as saying that “it is possible to navigate by the stars” rather than using online maps.
“This is pushing a thriving city that prided itself on its digital sophistication back into the Stone Age,” said Sarkis Darbinyan, a co-founder of digital rights organisation RKS Global.
The restrictions are particularly painful for businesses. Dmitrii Zair-Bek, cyber security expert and head of the human rights group First Department, described the damage as catastrophic, estimating losses at Rbs1bn–Rbs2bn ($12.5mn-$25mn) a day.
“This includes paralysed cloud IT infrastructure, disruptions to retail payment processing, and the shutdown of logistics hubs that critically depend on access to the global network,” Zair-Bek said.
A former Kremlin official said the decision most likely came from the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s main domestic intelligence agency, after authorities moved to crack down on messaging app Telegram and beef up defences against Ukrainian drone attacks in recent weeks.
He said Russia’s censors might lack the technological nous to block traffic from Telegram — which Putin was told was a “hostile form of communications” last week — on its own, meaning the blackouts have gone much further.
For the FSB, “security matters more than any losses” businesses face from the internet outage, the former senior official said.
Unlike other restrictions, the blackouts cannot be bypassed using conventional virtual private network technology.
“Similar scenarios have been used in other Russian regions for several months, and now it’s Moscow’s turn,” said Mazay Banzaev, a founder of Amnezia, an open-source VPN company.
Analysts believe that the spread of the “whitelist” system to home internet as well as mobile is only a matter of time. “Mobile internet is clearly being used as a testing ground for further tightening control over the entire internet segment in Russia,” said Banzaev.
Darbinyan of RKS Global said the authorities had previously tried to shield residents from the effects of war. “Now the priorities have shifted — comfort and services are giving way to the country’s main priority: ensuring its own security.”
