Kremlin Bars WhatsApp To Boost Own Platform

BY MATTHEW LUXMOORE

The Wall Street Journal
Feb 13, 2026

Russia is restricting access to WhatsApp as it accelerates its campaign to shift Russians away from Western-based messaging platforms outside its control and onto homegrown equivalents approved by the government.

The Kremlin on Thursday confirmed it was blocking WhatsApp. It also is throttling Telegram, now based in the United Arab Emirates, which is widely used by Russian soldiers. It has said companies that own platforms operating inside Russia, including Telegram and WhatsApp, are violating Russian law by refusing to comply with restrictions.

WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta, on Thursday said it would do whatever it could to keep 100 million users inside Russia connected.

“Today the Russian government attempted to fully block WhatsApp in an effort to drive people to a state-owned surveillance app,” it said on X.

Pavel Durov, the Russianborn founder of Telegram, on Tuesday said Russia was forcing its citizens to switch to “a statecontrolled app built for surveillance and political censorship.”

The app in question is Max, a messenger that has features similar to WhatsApp and Telegram but is state-controlled and offers no encryption, tech experts said. Russia is rolling out new features for Max and hopes it will become a homegrown super-app comparable to China’s WeChat, with a banking element and a portal to government services.

Moscow has for years tried to restrict Russians’ access to Western apps and internet platforms, but some previous efforts have failed. When it first tried to ban Telegram in 2018, people took to the streets. The government later abandoned the effort.

The push to create a censored internet similar to China’s accelerated after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russia shut off access to Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, X, and Google’s own Google News service. Among major non-Russian social platforms that offer broad access to independent news, only Telegram and WhatsApp avoided being shut off.

Millions of Russians downloaded virtual private networks to bypass the restrictions, and Moscow began to identify VPN services in a bid to also block them. The widespread use of VPNs by Russians, triggered by earlier internet restrictions, makes it far harder for Russia to enforce restrictions today.

Still, Max is gaining traction with Russian users, boosted by a push by officials and on state media to portray it as a safer alternative to WhatsApp and Telegram. Government institutions, including schools, are being told to use Max as a basis for communicating with staff and students.

Beyond the public statements from Meta and Telegram this week, the restrictions also have prompted a criticism inside Russia.

When news emerged that Moscow was throttling Telegram speeds this week, Russian war bloggers typically supportive of the Kremlin said the move risked impeding the Kremlin’s war effort in Ukraine.

“Switching off Telegram will first and foremost affect us,” one war blogger with more than one million Telegram followers posted. “For our servicemen this is a life buoy, because it ensures constant and fast communication.”

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