17 February 2026
Perhaps never before have Vladimir Putin’s supporters expressed such indignation at his actions. From one of his chief propagandists, Vladimir Solovyov, to State Duma deputies and Z-bloggers on the Ukrainian front, everyone is criticizing the authorities for blocking Telegram.
“To finally finish off the Russian Armed Forces command and control system after the crests restricted Starlinks, Roskomnadzor (RKN) decided to slow down Telegram. Beat your own to make others afraid! We can screw ourselves even worse, be afraid of NATA,” wrote little-known Z-blogger Ross Marsov. Meanwhile, the most famous propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov, a mouthpiece for Putin’s aggression, lamented the decline in his subscriber count after Telegram’s “slowdown” and claimed that Roskomnadzor (RKN) had deprived him of a portion of his audience by failing to provide any “worthy alternative.”
“This is the first time we’ve seen such an internal rift within various pro-Kremlin communities,” Tatyana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Berlin Center for Russia and Eurasia, told Bloomberg. “Telegram has replaced mainstream media in Russia. People interested in politics, and most of the Russian elite, follow Telegram channels to stay informed.”
For several days, State Duma deputies publicly expressed outrage at the attempt to “shut people up” (by Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov) and called for the “idiots” and “scoundrels” interfering with the messenger’s operation to be sent to the SVO (by A Just Russia leader Sergei Mironov). However, this didn’t stop them from authorizing the FSB to block all communications at Vladimir Putin’s behest (only deputies from the New People faction voted against the latest ban).
Even the regime’s most loyal guardians defied it. Ekaterina Mizulina, a prominent denunciator of activists, public figures, and journalists, wrote that she does not support restricting Telegram. “It’s symbolic that today is Safer Internet Day. A holiday, so to speak. Is this a gift or something?” she remarked, posting the word “Telegram” with a heart.
Mizulina explained her objections by the loss of “an important tool for promoting pro-Russian ideas.”
The nationalist movement “Russian Community ZOV” called for:
We can’t surrender to our enemies a field where they are losing… Russian patriotic bloggers are more popular on Telegram than our enemies… Telegram chats are a platform for uniting the Russian people for the good of the Motherland, where our soldiers communicate with each other, hundreds of thousands of people earn money and communicate with each other.
But the loudest and most desperate cries are coming from the Z-war correspondents. They were particularly outraged by Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, who said it was “difficult and impossible to imagine” that “frontline communications are provided via Telegram or some other messenger.”
“And how, in the opinion of the esteemed press secretary, is communication taking place at the front?” the Telegram channel “DShRG Rusich” wrote (and this was a rather tactful comment). “Everything is tied to Telegram chats: the exchange of information, coordinates, broadcasts (often conducted on the now-blocked Discord), and so on. The degree of detachment from reality is simply astounding. Just as important is the fact that we still don’t have a reliable, secure, and guaranteed-to-work satellite communications system. But, apparently, according to the strictly censored reports, the picture in the troops is completely different.”
There were many more comments like “Comrade Artem’s”: “I always try to use proper language. But this is complete bullshit.”
Opponents, and now even supporters, of the Putin regime are once again trying to find ways around the ban. In recent days, downloads of an app that allows access to Telegram without a VPN have sharply increased, Bloomberg notes. Also, since the blocking began, the free Telega app has seen a surge in popularity in the Google Play store. It helps users connect to Telegram servers using various routing methods and bypass Roskomnadzor restrictions.
Mikhail Klimarev, head of the Internet Protection Society, says:
Every time the system is tightened, people find a way around it. It’s an arms race.
You can bet that this double whammy (Telegram ban and dead Starlink) is observed with great glee in Ukraine.
It doesn’t always have to be a super-duper, hyper-diaper weapon to harm an enemy. Sometimes, seemingly innocuous things can do the same damage or even more.
It will be interesting to see how it plays out – will the ghoul backtrack and allow Telegram, and show weakness? (I understand that only videos/files/pics are blocked, not text)
I guess we’ll see. So far, videos and images are still being shared in mafia land via Telegram.