Telegram has started to seriously malfunction for Russian users — and experts believe that restrictions on the service's operation may have already begun.
According to monitoring services, about 12,000 complaints about the messenger's operation have been received in the last 24 hours. Almost 6,000 more messages about problems were left by users the day before.
Most of the complaints come from Moscow — about 43% of all requests, Saint Petersburg is in second place — about 16%, and about 6% are from the Moscow region.
Users write that messages are sent with a long delay, media files take a long time to load, and the application may freeze at the "connecting" status. Sometimes you have to wait several minutes to update chats.
Problems are especially noticeable when connecting via home internet and Russian IP addresses. In some cases, the messenger practically does not open. The situation is even worse via mobile internet — some users report that the application cannot connect to servers at all.
Not all circumvention tools help. If the region operates in a mode of access only to sites from the white list, many such services simply cannot open Telegram.
Tech expert Vladislav Voytenko notes that such symptoms may indicate the beginning of restrictions on Telegram's operation at the network infrastructure level.
Against the background of technical problems, the messenger also continues to face legal pressure in Russia. The Tagansky District Court of Moscow fined Telegram 35 million rubles for failing to remove prohibited information. The decision is related to five episodes of violation of legislation.