Telegram is reportedly being slowed down and restricted in Russia

Telegram users in Russia may begin noticing service disruptions on Tuesday after Russia’s communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, reportedly moved to slow down and restrict access to the app, as reported by Russian news outlet RBC.

Roskomnadzor said in a statement to RBC, translated using machine translation, that it “will continue to introduce successive restrictions” on Telegram, claiming the app is not taking adequate steps to prevent fraud and criminal activity. Reuters quotes Telegram users in Moscow who confirmed that they’ve been experiencing issues with the app, including a woman named Anna, who said, “It’s very bad because all my friends and family use Telegram. I don’t know how I’m going to communicate with them because I don’t want to move to other platforms.”

Telegram’s Russian-born founder and CEO, Pavel Durov, has not publicly commented on the issues, but his most recent tweet on February 8th took aim at leaders of several European nations. “Officials with the lowest approval ratings in the world (Macron, Starmer, Merz, Sanchez) are the loudest champions of social media bans for teens and ‘misinformation’ crackdowns,” wrote Durov, who was arrested in France in 2024 over the platform’s lack of moderation.