Topic Originator: P
Date: Fri 13 Mar 19:27
A reminder another war continues. Cannot imagine the response here if the internet was shut off.
“Disgruntled Muscovites have turned to pagers, walkie-talkies, landline phones and paper maps after more than a week of blackouts in the capital thought to have been ordered by the state.
Wi-Fi and mobile internet outages have swept Moscow city centre and its northern and southern districts, as well as parts of St Petersburg, for more than a week, leaving residents complaining of being unable to communicate.
Sources in the telecoms industry confirmed to business daily Kommersant that operators had been asked by authorities to limit mobile internet in swathes of the Russian capital.
Sales of pagers have soared by 73 per cent since the outages began, according to Wildberries, Russia’s biggest retailer, while walkie-talkie and landline phone purchases rose by more than a quarter. Sales of city maps and paper guides to Moscow have almost tripled.
Speaking to local media, residents complained of difficulties paying in cafés and shops, communicating with loved ones, transferring money and sky-high taxi prices as unscrupulous drivers exploit a brief reprieve from price-cutting competition from ride-hailing apps.
Daily business losses from the internet shutdown in the capital could be as high as one billion roubles (£9.4m) per day, according to a source from the telecom industry speaking to Kommersant.
“Meanwhile, a “white list” of state-approved websites has been made available to residents without an internet connection, made up of government apps and websites, Russian-owned social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, the state-owned MAX messenger and state media such as RIA Novosti.
“I thought: What if this is our new reality? I don’t want to leave Russia, but it seems that free access to the Internet is my red line,” one resident Lina told the opposition outlet Meduza.
The Kremlin has claimed that the outages are “necessary to ensure the safety of our citizens” and said they would last as long as required, without specifying a timeline for their removal.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said the measure was down to Ukraine’s “increasingly sophisticated attack methods” that required “more technologically advanced countermeasures” to repel them.”
“Moscow has repeatedly claimed that the outages that have swept much of the country seemingly without rhyme or reason are necessary to deter Kyiv’s long-range drones, which use mobile and GPS networks for navigation and control.
However, the RBC media organisation reported, citing anonymous sources, that the blackout was being used to test the new white list, prompting speculation it could soon be imposed on other cities and regions. Moscow’s dense telecom infrastructure makes it an ideal location to establish the new powers.
Analysts have also speculated that the blackouts could be used to silence dissent as the Kremlin reportedly plans an involuntary reserve call-up to replenish its ranks on the front line in Ukraine, where its losses are believed to have exceeded new recruits for three straight months.”
“On Thursday, a lawmaker claimed that the security services would be able to curtail VPN traffic within the next six months, raising further fears that Russians could lose one of their few remaining means of accessing information freely.
Since at least May 2025, internet blackouts have become commonplace in regions across Russia – the country ranked first in the world for the number of internet disruptions in 2025 – but the capital has largely been sheltered from that reality.
While waiting in line at a Moscow clinic, a correspondent from the independent journalists’ cooperative, Bereg, overheard one elderly patient lamenting the outages: “Maybe it’s connected to politics. When will all this end? Well, as long as there isn’t a war!”
When the puzzled correspondent countered that there was one, she retorted: “As long as there isn’t one in Moscow!””
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