Members of the State Duma of the Russian Federation announced plans to completely restrict access to the Telegram messenger within Russia starting in the autumn of 2026.
This is reported by pro-Russian media, citing the words of the deputy head of the relevant committee, Mikhail Delyagin.
The blocking procedure will follow the scheme previously applied to the video hosting service YouTube — by gradually “throttling” traffic until the service becomes completely inoperable.
As an alternative to the popular messenger, the Russian authorities are trying to promote a domestic development — the “Makh” app. In Russia they expect that active development of domestic software will allow replacing Telegram, although they acknowledge that part of the audience will still try to use the service through means of bypassing blocks (VPN), as previously happened with the social network Instagram.
Recall that in December 2025 it became known that Ukraine was added to the list of “unfriendly” states from which Russia plans to block telephone calls.