Executive Summary
On 1 March, a new phase of Russiaâs internet âsovereignizationâ came into force: the âcentralized network managementâ regime (1) allows the Ministry of Digital Development and Roskomnadzor (Russiaâs digital censorship agency), coordinating with the FSB, to place the Russian segment of the internet into isolation mode, restricting access to only those sites on the âwhitelistâ â a registry of âstrategicâ websites and services. Between 5 and 24 March, this was effectively implemented in Moscow, where mobile internet was shut down entirely in the city center and in select districts at the FSBâs demand. The security service had obtained additional powers on 3 March (2) enabling it to require operators directly to suspend communications and internet access.
This unfolded against the backdrop of an unprecedented campaign to tighten the blocking of Telegram â Russiaâs most popular messenger, with approximately 96 million users (3) â whose accessibility without circumvention tools (VPN services) dropped sharply from 95% on 13 March to 21% on 21 March (4); a full block is expected on 1 April (5). Alongside the technical squeeze, the authorities launched a propaganda campaign against Telegram: regional media outlets ran identical articles headlined âWhy you should delete Telegram before 31 Marchâ (6), while national medias reported that the FSB was investigating Telegramâs owner, Pavel Durov, for âfacilitating terrorist activityâ. Restrictions on VPN services were also ramped up â 469 had been blocked by the end of February (7).
Against a backdrop of a deteriorating socioeconomic situation and record levels of war fatigue, the cumulative effect of these Kremlin actions has been a sharp spike in public discontent. The domestic policy satisfaction index â measuring the gap between positive and negative ratings â fell by 15 percentage points over the first two months of 2026, according to figures from the Kremlin-controlled All-Russian Centre for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) as of the end of February (8), reaching its lowest point since the start of the war and effectively reverting to pre-war levels. The same trend is visible across other indices.
Concern over internet and messenger blockades overtook the habitual leading issue in Russian polling â rising prices and utility tariffs (9) â triggering a massive wave of negative reactions on social media. These sentiments were genuinely shared by the pro-war Z community, whose Telegram channels saw a 23% decline in views because of the blockades (10), and by some regime functionaries, who declared that ânobody understands why this is being doneâ (11). According to leaks, the level of public consensus is strikingly high â up to 85â90% of Russian citizens hold a negative view of the blockades â a situation that âcreates conditions for the accumulation of social discontent which could, in time, transition into more active forms of protest if an appropriate trigger arisesâ (12). It is likely this anticipated backlash that explains why the Presidential Administration has effectively chosen not to suppress public criticism of the blockades.
Kremlin-aligned commentators have been permitted to criticize censorship, apparently as a strategy for managing the rollout of total censorship more gradually by keeping the negative response under control. This approach allows the Kremlin to let the population âblow off steamâ, but it simultaneously opens windows of opportunity for large-scale opposition campaigns that could push the crisis beyond the bounds Moscow finds acceptable.
Russians have begun actively turning to alternative messengers, refusing to install MAX â the state-controlled messenger watched by the security services. March saw a surge of interest in mesh messengers: apps that link devices directly to one another via Bluetooth/Wi-Fi Direct without a central server, making them particularly relevant in the event of internet shutdowns â among them BitChat (US), Session (Switzerland), Keet (El Salvador), and Briar (UK). Russians have been searching for VPN services nearly three times more frequently than at the start of February, and interest in other previously niche messengers has grown significantly. The Kremlin had already prepared for this migration: among the ânewâ popular platforms was Telega â a Telegram clone that ranked second in app store charts for March â associated with VK, which is headed by Vladimir Kirienko, son of Sergei Kirienko, First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration. On 18 March, a previously hidden mechanism for intercepting and decrypting user traffic was activated in Telega (13).
In this environment, street-level domestic political campaigns intensified: on 13 March, an anonymous campaign appeared on social media calling for street protests against the blockades on 29 March â over 1,500 videos (14), some AI-generated, spread across TikTok and Instagram. The campaign was organized by the Scarlet Swan group, composed of young people aged 14â20; among the younger generation, according to a survey by the independent polling organization Russian Field (15), only 6% report no difficulties because of the blockades. Dmitry Kisiev, associated with Boris Nadezhdin â the anti-war candidate barred from the 2024 elections â separately announced mass rallies for 29 March. The organizersâ attempts to obtain official permits were met with rejection across the board: notifications submitted for events in 28 cities across 17 regions were refused in every case, in some instances after initial approval was granted and then revoked. According to leaks (16), regional authorities had been instructed not to approve the rallies, with the initial approvals attributed to officials underestimating the potential scale of the protests; leaks also indicated that âtens of thousands could have taken to the streets in Moscowâ (17) had permission been granted.
The Kremlin also deployed coercive pressure against the organizers: police visited young Scarlet Swan activists, and on 26 March the Ministry of Internal Affairs warned that âall attempts to hold such events will be immediately suppressed, and their organizers and participants detainedâ (18). Under this pressure, Scarlet Swanâs Telegram channel published a call for supporters to âstay home and rest on 29 March, as holding [the rally] is unlawful and anyone who turns out in a large crowd that day risks being detainedâ (19). Despite the counter-campaign, severe restrictions, and security service patrols of public squares in major cities, isolated protest attempts nonetheless took place on 29 March â in Moscow, for example, several dozen people gathered at Bolotnaya Square. In total, 20 people were detained (20) across four cities â Moscow, St Petersburg, Kaluga, and Voronezh â and two individuals are reported (21) to have been beaten in police custody.
This episode illustrates plainly that, in conditions of markedly rising social discontent, the Kremlin is acutely wary of civic mobilization and the consolidation of a broader protest agenda ahead of the autumn State Duma elections. At a closed seminar on 24 March, Boris Rapoport â a Presidential Administration staffer and subordinate of Alexander Kharichev, the Kremlinâs chief political technologist â identified the following potential vulnerabilities in the State Duma campaign (22): (1) the politicization of social discontent and its translation into electoral terms; (2) the use of the elections to undermine the patriotic consensus; (3) the identification and entrenchment of crystallization points for the protest movement.
The Kremlin is, for now, prepared to permit and even encourage public debate about censorship in the media and online, in order to let popular anger dissipate. What it cannot afford, however, is to allow people to take to the streets in protests that â had they been permitted â would have been massive and would inevitably have broadened into general opposition to the regime, compounded by the economic, social, and other war-driven grievances. At the same time, a new social dynamic is taking shape: despite the Kremlin's repressive measures, and what amounts to the effective imposition of martial law on civic activity, diverse segments of Russian society â from young people to regime functionaries and pro-war Z-forces â have shown themselves willing to publicly express discontent over issues that directly affect their daily lives, and to rapidly organize high-profile public campaigns and, where the opportunity exists, protest actions across the country.
The Escalating Internet Blockades and Digital Censorship
In February 2026, the Kremlin launched a new wave of internet restrictions that reached their peak in recent weeks. On 9 February, Roskomnadzor intensified the throttling of Telegram â the primary platform for communications and independent information beyond Kremlin control, with approximately 96 million users as of February 2026 (23) â following the blocking of WhatsApp in November 2025 (24). In mid-March, Telegramâs accessibility dropped sharply, with traffic collapsing from 95% on 13 March to 21% on 21 March (25). Sources at the independent outlet The Bell had earlier reported a decision to block Telegram entirely on 1 April (26). Throughout this period, a political campaign against the messenger ran in the background: on 24 February, several national propaganda newspapers simultaneously ran articles about the FSB investigating Telegramâs owner, Pavel Durov, for âfacilitating terrorist activityâ (27), (28); court proceedings were initiated against Telegram for failing to remove prohibited content (29); and regional media launched a coordinated campaign headlined âWhy you should delete Telegram before 31 Marchâ (30). According to the Russian edition of Forbes, however, the intensified Telegram throttling created capacity constraints: Roskomnadzorâs traffic-filtering infrastructure was unable to cope with the load (31). To address this, the Ministry of Digital Development (Mintsifry) set a target of increasing traffic analysis capacity by 2.5 times by 2030, with an additional allocation of 14.9 billion roubles (USD 191 million) earmarked for the purpose (32). The Kremlin has continued its campaign against circumvention tools: as of the end of February 2026, Roskomnadzor had blocked 469 VPN services (33). Their use has not yet been criminalized, but is treated as an aggravating factor in other âoffencesâ. Roskomnadzorâs focus is on services that âenable access to destructive contentâ (34).
At the same time, restrictions on internet access as such have expanded: mobile internet in central Moscow was cut off between 5 and 24 March at the FSBâs demand (35). Amendments to the Communications Act, which came into force on 3 March (36), give the FSB the authority to require operators to suspend both mobile and fixed-line communications and internet access. During this period, partial access was provided only to sites on Mintsifryâs âwhitelistâ (37) â a registry of âstrategicâ government websites and services. By various estimates, this may have caused economic losses to businesses of between 9.5 and 19 billion roubles (USD 117â234 million) (38), compounding the difficulties already facing entrepreneurs struggling to survive under increasingly restrictive fiscal policy. Partial internet shutdowns are continuing in other Russian regions as well. The legal foundation for these measures is the new phase of Russian internet âsovereignizationâ that began on 1 March â what is termed âcentralized network managementâ, under which Roskomnadzor, together with the FSB and Mintsifry, can now reroute traffic in real time and place the Runet in isolation mode in response to serious threats: âcyberattacks, outages, or attempts to destabilize the networkâ (39). In such cases, priority is given to verified infrastructure â the âwhitelistsâ â while other services face severe degradation in accessibility.
Passive Voice: Growing Discontent Among Citizens, the Z-Community, and Regime Functionaries
Internet restrictions and intensifying digital censorship have been among the drivers of a sharp increase in public discontent in Russia in FebruaryâMarch 2026, which has registered directly in approval ratings. Trust in the President, according to data from the state-controlled VTsIOM (40), has declined week on week since the start of the year â from 77.8% to 72%. Disapproval of the Russian Governmentâs performance is at a historic high for the duration of the war, at 24%, and continues to rise. The domestic policy satisfaction index for Russian citizens fell by 15 percentage points over the first two months of 2026, according to the latest VTsIOM figures as of 28 February (41). Furthermore, the same data show that satisfaction indices for domestic, economic, social, and foreign policy have all reached their lowest points since the start of the war and have returned to pre-war levels â indicating, in effect, that the rally-around-the-flag effect has dissipated; this decline was clearly compounded further by the authoritiesâ actions in March. According to data from the state-controlled Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), based on an open-ended question, the topic of internet and messenger blockades overtook the traditionally dominant topic of rising prices and utility tariffs in polling conducted between 13 and 15 March (42).
Discontent with the blockades has been actively expressed on social media: Russians flooded the official VKontakte page of Roskomnadzor with comments (43) and produced viral content criticising the restrictions. According to independent Novaya Gazeta Europe, the blockades have already caused a 23% decline in views for pro-government Telegram channels (44) â Vladimir Solovyovâs propaganda channel, for example, lost 35% of its views â while views for opposition channels fell by only 10%, as their audiences are more adept at using circumvention tools. The backlash was particularly pronounced within the pro-war Z community, for whom Telegram is central to the media and commercial ecosystem of ultranationalist influencers, and whose military users rely heavily on the messenger for internal communications in the combat zone in Ukraine. Even regime functionaries began to speak out publicly: Yevgeny Minchenko, a political analyst closely affiliated with the Kremlin, launched a systematic critique of the restrictions in late February (45), noting that ânobody understands why this is being doneâ (46); on 16 March, Yevgeny Primakov, head of Rossotrudnichestvo (Russiaâs propagandistic agency for international cultural and humanitarian relations), publicly defended Telegram (47); and on 19 March, Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Belgorod, declared that âRoskomnadzor should be put on trialâ (48). The Nezygar Telegram channel â known for managed leaks from the Presidential Administration â recorded that the blockades had generated an unusually rare degree of consensus: up to 85â90% of Russian citizens hold a negative view of the restrictions (49), âcreating conditions for the accumulation of social discontent that could, in time, transition into more active forms of protest if an appropriate trigger arisesâ.
Active Voice: âScarlet Swanâ and the Calls for Street Protests on 29 March
According to data from the Kremlin-controlled VTsIOM and FOM, the rise in discontent has not yet translated into higher protest potential scores; nonetheless, it has unambiguously become a catalyst for the intensification of street-level domestic political campaigns. On 13 March, an anonymous âScarlet Swanâ campaign was launched on social media â spreading across TikTok and Instagram â in which over 1,500 videos (50), some AI-generated, called for street protests against the blockades in cities across the country on 29 March. Some commentators linked the campaign to a possible provocation by Russian intelligence services (51). Journalists from independent Russian outlets were able to identify the organizers (52): the core team consists of young people aged 14â20 who advocate for âa free information spaceâ â according to a recent survey by the independent polling organization Russian Field (53), only 6% of teenagers say they are unaffected by the blockades, while 66% believe there are now too many blockades and prohibitions. At the same time, Dmitry Kisiev â former campaign director for Boris Nadezhdin, the anti-war candidate barred from the 2024 presidential elections by the Kremlin â announced on 14 March âmass rallies against internet and communications blockades on 29 March nationwideâ (54), signalling his readiness for dialogue with Scarlet Swan representatives. The campaign received indirect support from Rassvet (Dawn) â an unregistered anti-war party associated with Yekaterina Duntsova, another candidate barred from the presidential elections â whose statement urged supporters to participate only in events that received official approval from the Russian authorities (55).
The Kremlinâs response was swift: organizers submitted notifications to the authorities for events on various dates between 28 March and 1 April, covering 28 cities across 17 regions (56) â in every case, the authorities either refused immediately, or granted initial approval only to withdraw it subsequently (Yakutsk, Krasnodar, Vladimir, Murom, Penza), citing âCOVID restrictionsâ, âthreats of terrorist attacks and drone strikesâ, and âviolations of the principle of lawfulness in the aims of the rallyâ, on the grounds that Roskomnadzor was blocking the internet âwithin the powers granted to it by lawâ. According to leaks (57), âregional authorities had been instructed not to approve the ralliesâ, while initial approvals in certain regions were attributed to âofficials underestimating the potential scale of the protestsâ. The Kremlin also deployed its coercive apparatus against the organizers: on 19 March, police visited 20-year-old Stepan Razin and 19-year-old Sofia Chepik, among the organizers of the Scarlet Swan community; on 26 March, two Moscow students were arrested for 15 days for participation in an âunauthorized event against internet blockades at Bolotnaya Squareâ (58), even though, by the organizersâ plans, the event had been scheduled for 29 March. On the morning of 26 March, the Ministry of Internal Affairs also weighed in, warning that âparticipation in unsanctioned events ⊠entails administrative and criminal liability. All attempts to hold such events will be immediately suppressed, and their organizers and participants detainedâ (59). Under the pressure of permit refusals and coercive measures, activists called on âeveryone to stay home and rest on 29 March, as holding [the rally] is unlawful and anyone who turns out in a large crowd that day risks being detainedâ (60). In total, 20 people were detained (61) across four cities â Moscow, St Petersburg, Kaluga, and Voronezh â and two individuals are reported (62) to have been beaten in police custody.
This demonstrates the Kremlinâs practical concern: in conditions of markedly rising social discontent, any protest mobilization around a resonant public issue risks quickly spiralling out of control and producing the consolidation of a broader protest agenda. According to leaked reporting (63), âhad the rallies been permitted in Moscow, tens of thousands could have taken to the streetsâ. Such dynamics pose a serious problem for Presidential Administration functionaries ahead of the upcoming autumn State Duma election campaign. At a closed seminar on 24 March, Boris Rapoport â a Presidential Administration staffer and subordinate of Alexander Kharichev, the Kremlinâs chief political technologist â identified the following potential vulnerabilities in the State Duma campaign (64): 1 the politicization of social discontent and its translation into electoral terms; 2 the use of the elections to undermine the patriotic consensus; 3 the identification and entrenchment of crystallization points for the protest movement.
Exit: Alternative Platforms, VPNs, and the Kremlinâs Digital Dragnet
One practical objective of the blockades on platforms familiar to Russians is to drive users towards MAX â the state messenger under Kremlin control. Unwilling to migrate to a messenger that is transparent to the security services, however, Russian users have been actively searching for alternatives: since the start of March, a surge in interest has been recorded for the American video-calling service imo (+220%) (65), the Turkish messenger BiP (+295%) (66), South Korean KakaoTalk (+970%) (67), Estonian Gem Space (+420%) (68), and Chinese WeChat (+150%) (69). There has also been a notable spike in interest in mesh-network messengers, which link devices directly to one another via Bluetooth/Wi-Fi Direct, forming a ânetwork of phonesâ without a central server â an architecture of particular relevance in the event of internet shutdowns: the American BitChat (+1,090%), Swiss Session (+350%), Salvadoran Keet (+215%), and British Briar (+130%).
The Kremlin, however, had already prepared an interception mechanism for migrating users: among the ânewâ popular platforms was Telega â a Telegram clone disguised as the original â which ranked second in app store charts for March (70) and has seen a 3,340% increase in search queries since the start of the year (71). Telega is associated with VK, headed by Vladimir Kirienko, son of Sergei Kirienko, First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration. On 18 March, a previously hidden mechanism for intercepting and decrypting user traffic was activated in Telega (72), enabling VK to read, archive, and forward to the security services all user correspondence â with the ability to edit content.
Russians have also continued to install circumvention tools in large numbers: by March 2026, half of the 20 most downloaded apps in the App Store (iOS) in Russia were VPN services and proxy servers (73), while in Google Play (Android) the figure was 13 out of 20 (74). Compared to early February, Russians have been searching for VPN services nearly three times more frequently (75).