Over the past year, Russian authorities have been blocking popular messaging apps and coercing citizens to migrate to MAX, a new state-endorsed messenger platform. The messages there are presumed to be fully accessible to the F.S.B., the state security agency that succeeded the Soviet K.G.B. A recent joke from a comedy show on Channel One, Russian television’s largest outlet, went like this:
“Why are you writing to me in a private chat: ‘Hey everyone!’”? “Well, that’s how it works on MAX!”
That such a joke aired on Channel One — a significant stake of which belongs to Yury Kovalchuk, who also has strong ties to MAX and who is a friend of President Vladimir Putin’s — speaks to the animosity the people of Russia have toward the new app.
Usually the Kremlin faces dissent only from the small, liberal, perpetually-opposed-to-Putin part of society. But the state’s latest policies — blocking the internet on people’s phones, social media and internet messaging apps and running pro-MAX programming around the clock on many other broadcasts on Channel One — are generating criticism among the core of people who favored the war against Ukraine. Exacerbating frustrations at the rising costs of the war — in mid-May, Moscow was hit by a record-breaking Ukrainian drone attack — these internet restrictions have left everybody angry, and the rage is boiling over.
Mr. Putin and his cronies have been trying to restrict Russians’ access to the internet for a long time. The bans are always carried out using the same playbook: While denying people access to a service, the authorities offer them a Russian alternative, owned by people close to the Kremlin. If you can’t use Facebook, just use VK, whose chief executive is the son of Mr. Putin’s curator of domestic policy. If you can’t use YouTube, just use VK Video. These transfers are actively encouraged by the state-controlled media, which loudly accuse Western services of not complying with Russian law.
Only opponents of the regime were sounding the alarm when the government blocked independent media and platforms such as Twitter, popular mostly among urban freethinkers. Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, however, the restrictions have grown much tighter. Now, most international social media platforms with audiences of tens of millions are blocked or slowed down: Facebook and Instagram in 2022, YouTube in 2024 and, most recently, Telegram in 2025.
