Putin is “Max”xing out his police state

In his campaign for “digital sovereignty” Putin is trying to hermetically seal off the Russian public from truthful information, shutting down secure means of communication and replacing them with electronic spyware that all Russians will be required to carry in their pockets. The EU and the US can impose strategic sanctions to put the brakes on this development.

On March 26, 2025 the Kremlin’s Roskomnadzor (an abbreviation for “Russian communications surveillance”, the government organ in charge of information technology), through its VK company, released its multifunctional app “Max”. Max connects Russians with government services, banks, vendors, and each other, providing services parallel in many ways with WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram and similar messaging apps. But there is a crucial difference: unlike apps that are private and secure, Max is designed to spy on every user, revealing their transactions and locations to Russian authorities, even with the capacity to turn on cameras on devices to record activities. 

The Kremlin aims to force all Russians to use only Max, both by making Max obligatory for numerous necessary transactions and by squeezing all other messaging apps out of the country. Starting in September 2025 it became mandatory for all new devices sold in Russia to come with Max preinstalled. Max is becoming required for so many types of interactions that it is almost impossible to avoid. For example, many communications between patients and doctors and between parents and teachers can be conducted only through Max. One needs Max in order to pay fines and to confirm one’s identity to government authorities. Max is quickly becoming the equivalent of an internal passport without which one is deprived of all access to commercial, medical, educational, and legal services in the country. 

Since 2017 Roskomnadzor has been threatening to shut down Telegram, demanding that Pavel Durov (Telegram’s creator) hand over user information. Similar attacks have been aimed against WhatsApp, Meta (Facebook messenger), YouTube, and the like, with growing intensity, leading to slowdowns, a complete shutdown of voice calls in August 2025, and, since February 10, 2026, a partial shutdown also of messaging services. This has taken place even though Russian soldiers are largely dependent on Telegram for frontline communications. Many Russians have circumvented the blockage of messaging apps by purchasing VPN services, but in 2026 Roskomnadzor has allocated over 2 billion roubles to detecting and blocking VPNs, including by means of artificial intelligence. The arms race between the apps, VPNs, and Roskomnadazor continues to accelerate.

Rather than merely standing on the sidelines and wringing our hands, there is something that western countries can actually do to counteract the imposition of Max on the Russian populace: We can put Max on the list of sanctioned entities. That would remove Max from the main platforms for downloading the app, such as the App Store and Google Play. This is what Yulia Navalnaya (Aleksei Navalny’s widow) and her Platform of a Future Russia are proposing: that the EU and US sanction Max and its developers. There is every reason to do so, given that Max is at least as egregious as many other Russian entities that are already sanctioned, such as Sberbank, Russia Today, and RuTube. The west has a chance to stand up against Putin’s police state, and it is high time to act.