The blocking of Telegram in Russia began about a week and a half ago and has already reached the maximum level that the state is capable of at the moment. This assessment was given on March 17 to RTVI by Eldar Murtazin, a leading analyst at Mobile Research Group. According to the Merilo service, in the week from March 9 to 15, the proportion of unsuccessful requests to Telegram domains increased on average in Russia to 79.4% — by 47 percentage points in a week. In the Central Federal District, the figure reached 76.5%, in the Northwestern District — 78%, and in some districts it is approaching 90%. Officially, Telegram is not blocked in Russia — Roskomnadzor only acknowledged a "partial slowdown" of the service.
Technical Picture of Telegram Blocking: Why Indicators Differ by Region
The unevenness of the blocking is explained by the peculiarities of the operation of technical means of countering threats. According to market participants, the traffic filtering system works with approximately 2.5 million rules — not all nodes can cope with such a load equally. The equipment of providers is configured gradually: somewhere the systems are already operating at full capacity, somewhere they are in the testing stage, said Anastasia Bidzhelova, Development Director of the "Telecom Exchange".
In fact, the messenger has degraded in two stages. In February 2026, problems began with downloading multimedia. Since the weekend of March 14–15, text messages began to be sent with a delay, and the desktop version in a number of regions stopped working completely. Over the past day, more than 14 thousand complaints have been received on the websites "Sboy.rf" and Downdetector.
Position of the Authorities and Chronology of Telegram Restrictions in Russia
Roskomnadzor had already blocked Telegram in 2018 — due to its refusal to provide the FSB with encryption keys. In 2020, the restrictions were lifted. In August 2025, voice calls were blocked in the messenger. In February 2026, the department acknowledged a "partial slowdown" and warned that it would continue to restrict the service if it did not place servers in Russia and comply with Russian legislation.
According to RBC, citing sources, a complete blocking is scheduled for early April — this has not been officially confirmed. The head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Sergei Boyarsky, said that Telegram is in contact with Roskomnadzor, but removes only part of the required materials.
In fact, what we are seeing now is the maximum level of blocking that the state is capable of at the moment
According to MediaScope for January 2026, Telegram became the most popular messenger in Russia with 95.98 million users who opened the application at least once a month — compared to 89.42 million for WhatsApp. For comparison: in 2018, when Telegram was blocked for the first time, the messenger's audience in Russia was an order of magnitude smaller — the blocking then actually failed due to the massive use of VPN and the stability of the architecture.
Read more materials on the topic:
- Telegram is storming: tens of thousands of complaints, a fine from the court and talks about the beginning of the blocking
- Fraudsters block iPhones of Russians through Telegram mods — demand a ransom of up to 60 thousand rubles
- Peskov: Telegram must comply with the requirements of Russian legislation and establish contact with the authorities