MOSCOW, April 24. /TASS/. Russia’s telecom watchdog will continue insisting on removing Telegram from App Store and Google Play and is holding dialogue with the US companies, the press service told TASS on Tuesday.

"Roscomnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media) maintains a constant working dialogue with the companies on various issues of cooperation, including the current situation. Roscomnadzor insists on halting access to the Telegram app in the Internet stores of these companies’ apps," the statement said.

The Russian watchdog notified App Store and Google Play of its demand to remove the Telegram app on April 17.

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 and operators started restricting access to the banned resources.