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FACTBOX: What's the deal with Telegram in Russia

People in Russia are still complaining that the app doesn't work well

© Kirill Kukhmar/TASS

MOSCOW, March 30. /TASS/. Telegram blocked 150,286 channels and groups on its platform for violating its policies on March 28 and 29, TASS calculated based on statistics available on the messenger's website.

TASS has compiled the main information on the situation with the messenger.

Channel blocking

- On March 28 and 29, Telegram administrators blocked 150,286 channels and groups worldwide for violating its policies.

- As of March 30, more than 11,174,000 groups and channels have been blocked on Telegram since the beginning of the year.

- Over the past week, the app's admins blocked over 562,000 channels, bringing the total number of channels blocked to over 2.535 million since the beginning of the month.

- The largest blocking of channels and groups on the messenger since December 2023 occurred on January 1, 2026 (nearly 543,000 groups and channels).

- According to earlier calculations by TASS, also using statistics from the messenger's website, in 2025, Telegram blocked almost 2.7 times more channels and groups for violating its policies than in 2024 - over 44 million.

Complaints about Telegram

- People in Russia are still complaining that the app doesn't work well, but not so many as before, according to data from the service Sboy.RF.

- According to the service, 218 users reported problems in the past 24 hours. In particular, 33% of them complained about outages in Moscow, 7% in St. Petersburg, 6% in the Krasnodar Region, 6% in the Novosibirsk Region, and 4% in the Amur Region.

- In total, the number of complaints over the weekend of March 28 and 29 was 1,375, which is less than the 8,061 complaints over the weekend of March 21 and 22 the previous week.

On the messenger's operation in Russia

- When asked about the service's prospects in the country, Sergey Boyarsky, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, said that Telegram messenger will be able to continue operating in Russia if it complies with all requirements of Russian legislation.

Restrictions on Telegram

- Last August, the country’s communications watchdog Roskomnadzor restricted calls via Telegram.

- According to the watchdog, the messenger was being used for fraud, extortion, and cybercrime.

- Earlier Roskomnadzor reported that the agency had decided to slow down Telegram services due to the messenger's "systematic and persistent violation of federal law."

- On February 10, Roskomnadzor reported that Telegram still fails to comply with Russian law, and therefore efforts to restrict it will continue.

- Denis Kuskov, CEO of the Telecom Daily information and analytical agency, announced on March 17 that the blocking of the messenger in Russia had entered its final stage.

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