Since March 5, mobile internet disruptions have continued in Moscow. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the loss of service was linked to additional security measures amid attacks that, he said, are using increasingly sophisticated methods.
Traveling toward the city center on the Sokolnicheskaya metro line, a reporter found that services and messengers stopped working near Park Kultury station, including Telegram even with a VPN. At the same time, some services on so-called whitelist exemptions, including Yandex products, continued to function.
Against that backdrop, according to the press service of the Chitai-Gorod bookstore chain, sales of paper maps in Moscow rose by nearly 50% between March 6 and March 10. A saleswoman at one bookstore said customers had started asking for atlases and maps much more often during the outages. In her words, many people feel lost without the internet access they are used to.
Queues have formed at mobile operator stores in shopping centers. An employee at Tele2 told one visitor that mobile internet was currently unavailable in the center for any operator, and that only selected whitelist resources, such as Gosuslugi and banking apps, could still be used. Even so, some customers are buying new SIM cards in the hope that at least one of them will work.
At an MTS outlet, visitors also complained about the lack of bill recalculations and unstable service. A student from a nearby university said her expensive unlimited plan had stopped working in central Moscow, and that only the university’s Wi‑Fi was helping her during classes.
Earlier, Mobile Research Group lead analyst Eldar Murtazin told RTVI that whitelist services work very differently in regions where shutdowns have become routine: sometimes all approved services are available, sometimes only some of them, and sometimes nothing works except voice calls. A resident of the Moskvorechye-Saburovo district described similar problems: near schools, hospitals, and clinics, even MOS.ru would not open, forcing her to retrieve details of a doctor’s appointment from a terminal at the clinic.
Problems with communications have also increased demand for landline telephony in the capital. State Duma deputy from United Russia Igor Antropenko proposed installing public phone booths in large cities, including with internet access. Some Muscovites, meanwhile, have started using special VPN services which, they say, can bypass the restrictions and even allow access to blocked Telegram.