Russia moved to fully block WhatsApp on Thursday, with the Meta-owned company saying Moscow is trying to push over 100 million of its Russian users onto a state-controlled “surveillance app” as the Kremlin strengthens its crackdown on foreign messaging platforms.

“Trying to isolate over 100 million users from private and secure communication is a backwards step and can only lead to less safety for people in Russia,” WhatsApp tweeted. “We continue to do everything we can to keep users connected.”

Roskomnadzor, Russia’s communications regulator, has simultaneously moved to restrict Telegram, saying it will continue imposing limitations until the app complies with local law, state-owned news agency TASS reported.

The coordinated pressure campaign fits a pattern that digital rights advocates say is increasingly common among authoritarian governments.

“Yeah, we’ve seen this before. China, Iran, and now Russia. Same pattern every time — block the foreign platforms, spin up a domestic app, call it ‘sovereignty’ or ‘security,’” Shady El Damaty, co-founder of human.mind, and digital rights advocate, told Decrypt.

“And what happens is exactly what we all expect. The new platform becomes a control point. Starts with soft nudges, then it’s mandatory for government services, then surveillance just becomes the default,” he added.

Max, WeChat, and the surveillance state

Russia has been quietly building its replacement. Max, a state-developed “super app” modelled on China’s WeChat, combines messaging with government services but lacks end-to-end encryption.

Local media reported that since last year, authorities have mandated Max be pre-installed on all new devices sold in the country, with public sector employees, teachers, and students required to use the platform.

“Russia is restricting access to Telegram to force its citizens onto a state-controlled app built for surveillance and political censorship. This authoritarian move won’t change our course,” Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov tweeted on Wednesday, pointing to Iran as proof the strategy backfires.

“8 years ago, Iran tried the same strategy—and failed. It banned Telegram on made-up pretexts, trying to force people onto a state-run alternative. Despite the ban, most Iranians still use Telegram and prefer it to surveilled apps. Freedom prevails,” he added.

In 2020, Russian authorities lifted their two-year attempt to block Telegram after technical enforcement failed and users widely bypassed the restrictions.

El Damaty said decentralised tools still have weak gateways, warning that “most of those tools still have choke points—app stores, hosted UIs, backend APIs,” that “real decentralisation and privacy isn’t a vibe, it’s the most critical infrastructure,” and that without fixing this, “we’re not actually solving the problem.”

Dmitry Peskov, press secretary to President Putin, told state-owned TASS that WhatsApp’s restoration is “possible subject to compliance with Russian law and a willingness to engage in dialogue,” adding that “if the corporation continues to take the same uncompromising stance — a complete unwillingness to comply with Russian law — then there’s no chance.”

The Kremlin and Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Decrypt.

“This goes way deeper than messaging apps,” El Damaty added.

“When a government controls how you communicate, they control what you say, who you say it to, and whether you say anything at all,” he said,  noting that “privacy isn’t a feature, it’s the baseline for everything else—speech, freedom, safety, identity.”

He pointed out that infrastructure must reflect those values at the design level, not just in messaging, saying systems should have “no backdoors, no vendor lock-in, no centralized switch someone can flip,” and warning that if that foundation is ignored, “we’re going to wake up in five years having rebuilt the same broken systems, just with better branding.”

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Author: Vismaya V