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Russia’s telecom watchdog says blocked Google IP addresses over Telegram

The company has not met the demands of Roscomnadzor and allowed Telegram to use its IP addresses for activity in Russia

MOSCOW, April 22. /TASS/. Russia’s telecom watchdog said on Sunday it has included some Google’s IP addresses in the registry of banned information as the US Internet giant has failed to comply with its demands on blocking Telegram messenger in Russia.

"As of today, Google has not met the demands of Roscomnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media) and in violation of the court’s verdict continues allowing the Telegram Messenger Limited Liability Partnership company to use its IP addresses for activity in the Russian territory," the watchdog wrote on Twitter.

"Due to this, Roscomnadzor has included in the registry of banned information a number of IP addresses of Google, which are used by Telegram to carry out its activity in Russia," it said.

On April 13, Moscow’s Tagansky court blocked access to the cloud-based instant messaging service, Telegram, in Russia over its failure to provide encryption keys to the Federal Security Service, the FSB. The court satisfied the lawsuit by Russia’s telecom watchdog filed on April 6. Telegram said those demands would be impossible to implement since the keys were stored on users’ devices.

On April 16, the court’s decision on blocking access to all Telegram products in Russia came into effect. Data operators received information on restricting access to the messenger. On the same day, the Russian media watchdog started blocking IP addresses of Google and Amazon subnetworks used by Telegram. Malfunctions of other resources, which their hosting services used, were reported.