The chairman of the council of the Digital Economy Development Fund, German Klimenko, stated that Telegram in Russia will be blocked, and a repeat of the 2018 scenario — when the blocking actually failed — is impossible in the current conditions. He expressed his opinion in a conversation with aif.ru. According to Klimenko, Telegram founder Pavel Durov is not cooperating with the Russian state and is not taking steps to preserve the messenger's operation in Russia. By March 20, many users are already unable to fully use the service — problems with sending messages and loading media files have been observed since the beginning of March. The media reported a possible complete blocking on April 1 — this has not been officially confirmed.
Why the 2026 Telegram Blocking Will Be More Effective Than the 2018 Blocking
In 2018, Roskomnadzor blocked Telegram by IP addresses once a day — without specialized technical means. Telegram successfully circumvented these restrictions, and the blocking was lifted in 2020. Now the situation is fundamentally different: operators have technical means of countering threats (TSPU) installed, which monitor traffic and block VPNs. Roskomnadzor is systematically reducing the number of available VPN services.
I think that the 2018 option will not work. Now the RKN has TSPU, which are installed at operators, monitor traffic and block VPNs. The option that the messenger will fully function, and Roskomnadzor will watch this, will definitely not happen,"
Built-in proxies inside Telegram, according to Klimenko, will only provide a short-term temporary solution.
According to Forbes, citing sources, the RKN traffic filtering tools are overloaded by the volume of blockings — this explains the cases of temporary availability of previously blocked resources. Roskomnadzor denies this information, insisting on sufficient capacity.
