Russia announced on Wednesday to restrict calls made via the messaging WhatsApp and Telegram, a new tour of the authorities after the blocking, in recent years, of several Western social networks.
“To combat criminals, measures have been taken to restrict calls on these foreign messaging applications (WhatsApp and Telegram),” said state -of -the -art state, citing the Russian communications supervision authority.
The Russian authorities accuse these messaging widely used in Russia of facilitating fraud and “of involving Russian citizens in acts of sabotage and terrorist activities”, adds the same source.
Freedom of expression flouted
Reacting to this measure, Telegram said in a statement “actively fight against the abusive use of its platform” and delete “every day millions of harmful content”.
“WhatsApp is a private, quantity of Bout-en-Bout, which is attempted by governments to undermine the right of people to secure communication, and that is why Russia is trying to block it for more than 100 million Russians,” said a spokesperson for Whatsapp, a subsidiary of Meta.
Russia has multiplied in recent years the measures restricting freedom of expression on the Internet, which has long been one of the last spaces where critical voices could be expressed freely.
At the end of July, Russian President Vladimir Putin promulgated a law punishing internet research classified as “extremists” and which prohibits promoting VPNs, systems widely used in Russia to circumvent censorship.
Meta “extremist”
Since 2024, the YouTube video platform has only been accessible in Russia via a VPN. And since 2022, Facebook and Instagram social networks of the American group Meta, declared “extremist” in Russia, are also blocked.
In July, a Russian deputy, Anton Gorelkine, told him that WhatsApp, also owned by Meta, had to prepare for “leaving the Russian market” because there was “a high probability that the application would soon be added to the list of applications coming from countries considered” inmucal “by Moscow. These statements had raised fears of a next blocking of WhatsApp.
Scams via messaging are very frequent in Russia. The authorities also accuse Ukrainian security services of recruiting Russian applications through these applications to make them commit acts of sabotage in the country in exchange for a promise of remuneration.