On the evening of August 18, 2026, a massive internet outage was recorded in Russia. Users simultaneously experienced problems with dozens of providers and online services. Most reports came from residents of Moscow and the Moscow region.
Which services experienced a temporary outage?
Users left hundreds of messages about problems with Lovit, Seven Sky, MegaFon, Ekotelekom, and Rostelecom. Ufanet and Beeline subscribers also reported outages. An outage was also reported at Reg.ru, the largest domain name registrar in Russia.
The number of complaints about Discord, Steam, Ivi, DNS store, VKontakte, Pikabu, Telegram, and other services grew. A massive increase in reports to several unrelated resources could indicate problems with network accessibility for operators.
The problems were most pronounced in Moscow and the Moscow region. More than 3.5 thousand complaints were received from the capital and the Moscow region. In St. Petersburg, about 450 reports were registered during that period.
Reports of an accident at the MMTS-9 data center
There were reports of interruptions in the operation of the MMTS-9 communication hub, located in the Gagarinsky district of Moscow. On August 18, power supply temporarily disappeared on some floors there.
At the same time, an accident was reported at the power substation on Vavilova Street, after which part of the district was left without electricity. During the interruptions, train intervals temporarily increased at nearby metro stations. The Department of Transport explained this by infrastructure checks.
The Moscow City Economy Complex explained that short-term disconnections of individual consumers were associated with the technological switching of power supply sources.
Temporary internet outage eliminated
A Reg.ru representative reported that some services might have been unavailable due to a power outage at a major communication hub. Because of this, users experienced difficulties accessing various resources, including those hosted on Reg.ru.
Subsequently, the massive outage was eliminated. Rostelecom's data transmission networks are operating normally, and traffic exchange is generally ensured. At MMTS-9, backup power sources, including diesel generators, were used to maintain operation.