"Internet shutdowns ruin normal life in Russia"

Blackouts of mobile internet are daily affecting millions of Russians, but journalist at the Barents Observer Georgii Chentemirov does not believe that the shutdowns are a sign of despair among Putin and his men, nor that they will lead to a wave of public protest. 

"The main signal from the Kremlin is that they don't care about people at all," he says. 

Chentemirov recently wrote a story about the major blackouts and shutdowns of mobile internet in Russia, including in the northern regions of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk.

What is happening?

I can say that the shutdowns are continuing.

They started maybe in summer and the level of the shutdowns, the volume of them are increasing and increasing. And now, for instance, just a few days ago there was a report from one of the ministries in the Komi Republic that mobile internet in the town of Ukhta was shut down for 11 days.

So it's not some kind of one-day or a few-hours shutdown. It's a long term, multi-day shutdowns of mobile internet and not only mobile internet.

So why is this happening?

The official explanation from Russian authorities, local authorities, is safety reasons.

They don't explain details, but we can assume that they think about defense from drones because they think, and actually it's partly true, that drones can use mobile internet and signals to navigate.

The truth is that drones use several systems for navigation and I'm not a specialist in that topic, but as I understand, it's an open question if these shutdowns help to interferedrone attacks or not.

But it is 100% clear that drones use different types of tools for navigation. But the official reason is to shut down mobile internet because it helps to fight with drones.

Russia is a rather digitalized society. How do normal Russians cope without mobile internet?

It ruins all normal life. Taxi drivers can accept their orders. And if they accept them, they don't know where to go because they use maps on mobile phones, which doesn't work without mobile internet.

Of course, you can upload it, but anyway, people use it.

Mobile shops cannot accept the payments because the terminals for payment, they don't work without mobile internet. Some people, use to get remote consultations with doctors and they cannot do it because there is no mobile internet and they cannot take a call via WhatsApp or Telegram, a video chat.

They cannot do it anymore. So the impact is very, very big.

Businesses are struggling, suffering and the same goes for people in the streets.

So do we now see a Russia that is going backwards in time? Will for example, Russians have to start using cash when shopping?

That's absolutely what they're doing now. In my text, I tell the story of one woman.

She tells about how they figured out how to live without the possibility to pay by card.

They go to an ATM, they take cash, but the problem that it's not enough cash in these ATMs.

So people, and you know, the authorities, they tell, okay, there are some advises how to manage in this situation, you should do this and this and this, and you should have some cash, which sounds quite crazy in 2025.

They advise to have cash to buy food or other goods in the shop.

This comes on the backdrop of growing repression from the Russian regime and amidst the ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine. Does it indicate some sort of despair in the Kremlin?

I don't want to fall into wishful thinking. Despair of Kremlin will appear when there is a threat, a real threat, to the regime. Now the situation on the frontline is actually quite good for Russia, unfortunately, and the situation in civil society is absolutely safe for the Kremlin.

I don't think that the situation with shutdowns means that Kremlin is scared for something.

They just make some reaction on some threats and they don't care about the safety of people.

The main signal is, maybe, that they don't care about people at all.

They don't think about consequences for people, for business, for anything.

But I don't think it's the sign of despair.

We see that the Ukrainians increasingly are bringing the war back to the home ground of the aggressor, to Russian soil. Are Ivan and Olga, the average Russians, are they now for real starting to feel the real pain and consequences of Russian aggression?

Yes and no.

They feel the consequences. But of course, we cannot even compare these consequences with consequences for Ukrainians, which are faced with Russian aggression.

Russia attacks, Russia bombs Ukrainian town, Russia kills people. And it's incomparable with lack of possibility to order a taxi, for instance.

But they feel these consequences. The problem that they don't always understand.

Unfortunately, I cannot go to Russia, I cannot go to the street, but I see the comments and people don't connect the fact of the war and the fact of these shutdowns.

If they connect, they blame the Ukrainians.

They quite often don't understand that these drone attacks, for instance, are the result of Russian aggression.

It's the defense of Russia. And the consequences for them, for Russians, is quite significant.

But of course, it's not comparable with situation in Ukraine, which Russia made.

Could it lead to growing discontent with the regime, that people are without Internet Could it lead to a higher level of protests against regime?

Firstly, as I mentioned, people very often don't understand that it's the blame of Putin and regime. That it is the result of Putin's activities and the full-scale war in Ukraine.

Secondly, maybe the main reason is that the Kremlin has destroyed all base for protests.

And unfortunately, we know it. They destroyed all civil society.

We witnessed the imprisoning and even murder of political [opposition] leaders in Russia. We see the repressions, people are afraid to open their mouth and there is no real base for protest right now.

It seems to me, history shows that protests can appear for some even small reason. No one can predict what can trigger the protest. But I am not sure if this situation can lead to a big protest against Putin's regime.

In addition to the shutdowns of the mobile internet, we also see a wider clamp down on other channels of information and communication. Of course, Russian media has been repressed for many years and there is hardly any, well, there's no independent media left in Russia today. But we see lately that also communication and messenger services like Telegram and WhatsApp are also being blocked, at least partly blocked. How does this affect the lives of people in Russia?

This is a little bit another topic because shutdowns of the internet maybe is a real quite tough thing for Russians because of its impacts on their economical life. Yes, they cannot pay for something.

But WhatsApp and Telegram, I think it's a little bit another topic. It's an attempt to silence people, to cut their ties maybe with relatives who lives in other countries.

I think it's really an attempt to make life harder for people and to cut information channels. 

People used to use WhatsApp for very, very common things. They don't call their kids using mobile phone. They call by WhatsApp, via WhatsApp because it's cheaper and you can make a video call for instance. And people used to use it every day, and the same with Telegram.

Now it's more problematic. I think it creates some inconvenience for people.

But I think we will see what the Russian authorities will do after because maybe they will try to shut down everything. Maybe they will try to ban all social media, except VKontakte. We don't know.

But are there any alternative new channels of information and communications now being planned or developed by Moscow?

I want to say that when we see the advices from Russian authorities how to avoid consequences of the shutdowns, they tell people to use cable internet, use cell phone, ordinary calls.

But I want to say that sometimes it doesn't work.

Firstly, we see a lot of claims from people who tell that mobile calls don't work either. So at the same time as the mobile internet shuts down, you cannot use your telephone just to call to emergency or something like that.

And the same with SMS.

People report about problems with mobile connection and SMS connection in the same time.

So it's a lie that people can just use another channel.

And the same with the advice to use cable internet. Sometimes it's just impossible because there is a lot of settlements, there is a lot of villages in Russia, which don't have cable internet. You have only mobile internet and actually it's a big luck if you have it.

But sometimes, if you have it, it doesn't work, there is no connection at all.

And you can't use anything, you can't use services, state services, go to GosUslugi, Sberbank, these kind of things.

So these alternative channels exist, but not always. If we talk about the situation with information, how to receive information, okay, people used to use VKontakte, or maybe Telegram which is not absolutely blocked.

People used to use VPN and now they do it more and more often because just a few years ago it was quite a rare thing. Oh, you have VPN, what is it?

Now all people know what VPN is because you cannot watch YouTube without VPN. Instagram was blocked three years ago and so on. But now people use it more and more so they try to circumnavigate these restrictions.

What about this new messenger service which is called Max? Can you say two words about that?

It's a joke that Max is a virus with some functions of a messenger service.

I saw some opinions, some rumours about Max, that people are afraid because there are enough ways to follow people right now, even without Max.

So Max is not just one tool that, okay, if you install it now, FSB can follow you. They can follow you right now.

Yandex and a lot of these apps on your phone, they offer some technical opportunities. Max is not the only tool that they created to follow people.

But of course there are some features installed in this Max which give us possibility to think that it's at least one instrument of following people and going deeper in private life.

A lot of people I know, they avoid to install it, they don't want to do it. And I think that Russian authorities, the Kremlin will make some efforts to force people to do it.

There are some rumors about new phones in Russia that cannot be sold without Max on their device.

We see a kind of new iron curtain now descending on Europe between East and West. It's increasingly hard to find out what is actually happening. How can we on this side of the border find out what is actually happening on the Russian side and vice versa? How can Russians find out what is happening on our side of the border?

Yes, maybe, I can say about social media. Yes, we see all these problems with access in the Internet.

And I think that the Kremlin wants, dreams at least, about cutting all these possibilities, cutting all these information channels.

But people still use the Russian "VKontakte". People write what they think. Not very often they are totally open, honest.

But at least we can see this information. For example, the information about internet and lack of mobile connection and SMS. You can find it in "VKontakte". So we can use these sources to get information about Russia.

People use Telegram. It's not blocked.

They try to block calls via Telegram, but Telegram is not blocked.

Authorities publish there and people can publish there what they want. And the same way Russians can, they can follow Telegram channels if they are interested in getting some real information.

YouTube, they try to slow down it. YouTube is almost banned in Russia, but as I told, people use VPN. People used to circumnavigate this ban.

So there are still some opportunities to get information from Russia and to Russians from abroad.

Russian censorship is increasingly rigid and the Russian authorities are strictly controlling the information space and cracking down on irregularities, so-called. Are we seeing a Russia that is moving down the path towards some kind of North Korea style regime?

Firstly, I think they want, but at the same time, I think it's quite difficult because as you mentioned a few minutes ago, Russia is a really deeply digitalized country.

They cannot just ruin all these achievements and a lot of things, they will just, they

just cannot work if they will implement this North Korea experience.

Secondly, if even if they have these plans, they will do it slowly.

It's the Kremlin tactic to do it slowly. That's why Kremlin became so successful in repressions and in propaganda, they do it quite slowly.

Now they do it, they can do it much faster because we see that civil society doesn't

exist and there is full scale propaganda, full scale repressions. But if we talk about this kind of sensitive topics, which can impact on everyday life of tens of millions of people, they will do it slowly.