On the morning of March 9, 2026, a massive disruption in mobile internet service was recorded in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region. Data transmission problems affected subscribers of all major telecom operators in the region — MTS, Beeline, MegaFon, and Tele2.
According to network activity monitoring information, the most pronounced difficulties were observed when using services sensitive to delays and packet loss: the Telegram messenger, mobile banking clients, and applications requiring a constant connection to servers.
Regional authorities have confirmed the communication network disruptions. The Governor of the Leningrad Region, Alexander Drozdenko, explained that the reason for the restrictions was the introduction of a drone threat mode in the region. In connection with this, additional radio-technical security measures were activated, which, according to the official, could have affected the stability of civilian telecommunications equipment.
In the first hour after the start of the incident, emergency services received about 400 calls from users, and within 24 hours their number approached one and a half thousand. Telecom operators announced that they were working in an enhanced mode and coordinating with relevant departments to minimize the consequences for subscribers.