On March 26, 2025, Russia launched the public version of the MAX messenger, which the authorities promote as a substitute for Telegram. Within a year, the service came to be presented not as an alternative but as a required tool for study, work, and everyday tasks alongside Gosuslugi.
By the end of 2025, the shift to MAX had become widespread, especially for schoolchildren, students, and public-sector workers. Education Minister Sergey Kravtsov said on March 11 that all Russian schools were already using only MAX for chats and claimed the service had more than 20 million teachers and students, although there is no confirmation of that figure.
At the same time, many users oppose the rollout. According to a survey by Doctors of Russia, 70% of medical workers do not support introducing MAX into healthcare. School and university students often continue forwarding study materials through other services, and in the Sverdlovsk region, according to the Russian Field center, 61% of schoolchildren refused to install the app at all.
The authorities are expanding mandatory use of the service into other areas as well. Since June 1, 2025, banks and telecom operators have been required to communicate with clients through a Russian messenger, and since late 2025 some users have faced extra barriers when logging into the mobile Gosuslugi app, with MAX verification required. A law on residential building chats, signed by Vladimir Putin in December 2025, requires management companies to move to MAX from September 1, 2026.
Against this backdrop, the service has been criticized for weak privacy protections, the lack of end-to-end encryption, and heavy moderation. Reports described the deletion of thousands of public chats, channel blocks without explanation, and cases where some chat images could be viewed through a direct link without authorization. Users also complained about automatic subscriptions to pro-government channels.
The service’s claimed scale is disputed. VK says more than 107 million users have registered with MAX, but according to estimates by Agentstvo, around 70% of its channels are linked to state bodies, and the average government channel has only 220 subscribers. Kommersant reported that MAX’s audience is about 60 times smaller than Telegram’s, while the authorities continue both advertising MAX and maintaining a presence on Telegram.