MOSCOW, April 19. /TASS/. Russia’s telecom and media watchdog, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, has not discredited itself by temporarily failing to block the Telegram messaging service as it will take time to implement this decision, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "Clearly, the implementation of the law takes time, one should understand that it cannot be done in one day," he said, adding "let us wait just a little more."
When asked if the watchdog had discredited itself by failing to promptly ensure the blocking of Telegram, he said that he did not "think it is a discredit" to the watchdog.
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The massive blocking of IP addresses by the media watchdog should not disrupt the operation of any Internet resources, the Russian presidential spokesman added.
"There should be no issues with access to any resources," he said, commenting on numerous reports saying that many third-party websites and Internet resources became unavailable after the process of blocking had begun.
On April 13, Moscow’s Tagansky District Court ruled to block access to Telegram in Russia over its failure to provide decryption keys for messages to the Federal Security Service. The court’s judge said the decision must be implemented immediately and the access ban would remain in place until the FSB’s demands were met. Telegram said the demand was impossible to comply with technically, since the keys are stored on user devices.
On April 16, the Russian media watchdog received the court’s ruling on restricting access to Telegram’s products. On the same day, mobile operators began to take steps to block Telegram in compliance with the court’s decision. In addition, the watchdog blocked numerous IP addresses belonging to Amazon and Google that Telegram used to avoid restrictions. According to Internet users, this step made some Internet resources, particularly belonging to Russian companies, banks and private clinics, unavailable in the country.