No country for calls. Russian censorship agency confirms throttling voice calls on WhatsApp and Telegram to “fight crime”

The confirmation from Roskomnadzor on Wednesday follows days of widespread reports from users across Russia who were unable to make or receive calls, or experienced severely degraded audio quality on WhatsApp and Telegram.

In a statement to the news outlet RBC, Roskomnadzor said it was acting on information from law enforcement to counter illegal activity. “To counter criminals, in accordance with materials from law enforcement agencies, measures are being taken to partially limit calls on these foreign messengers,” the agency said. It added that “no other restrictions on their functionality are being introduced.”

The regulator claimed that, based on “data from law enforcement agencies and numerous appeals from citizens,” Telegram and WhatsApp had become the “primary voice services used for deception and extortion of money, and for involving Russian citizens in diversionary and terrorist activities.”

This reasoning, however, appears at odds with data from Russia’s own Central Bank. Investigative reporter Andrey Zakharov pointed out the bank’s findings, which show that phone calls are the leading method for fraud schemes (45.6%), dwarfing the 15% attributed to messaging apps.

Earlier, Russian Forbes and Ksenia Sobchak reported that major Russian telecom operators—MTS, Megafon, Beeline and Tele2—had been lobbying the government to block call functions on foreign apps. The operators, according to these reports, have argued that such a move would drive revenue back to their traditional, billable mobile calls and help them finance the high cost of maintaining network infrastructure under the pressure of international sanctions.

Roskomnadzor itself threatened to enact voice call restrictions as early as October 2024, when agency chief Andrey Lipov told the TASS state news agency that a “tough option” was possible to combat fraud. “Relatively speaking, until you comply, no one will be able to make calls through you,” Lipov said at the time.

Years after its failed attempt to block Telegram completely, the state has shifted from simply blocking websites—as it has done with Mediazona and thousands of other news outlets since 2022—to hindering specific functions within applications to force compliance with Russian censorship laws.

This new doctrine of granular control is now being formalized into a national framework. On August 7, Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadayev announced a new system for managing mobile internet during security-related restrictions. Under this plan, users will face a CAPTCHA test to access a state-approved “whitelist” of essential services, such as marketplaces and taxis, while all other internet traffic is throttled or blocked.

Alongside these infrastructural controls, new laws target citizens directly. A law passed in July makes it illegal to simply access any content deemed “extremist.” Until now, even amid sweeping crackdowns on internet freedom, merely viewing banned content—as opposed to posting or sharing it—has not been grounds for prosecution, a change that dramatically escalates the stakes for ordinary Russians online.