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Russia’s internet is undergoing strange changes after apps turn on and go offline unexpectedly.
Telegram, the country’s most popular messaging app, went down on Tuesday along with other platforms such as YouTube and social media site Vkontakte.
At the same time, Instagram and Facebook users found themselves able to access these sites for the first time in two years.
Russia’s public communications network monitoring center said on Tuesday that experts had recorded a “massive failure” of Telegram, but the reason was not immediately clear. Telegram did not respond to a request for comment.
“Telegram messenger and many other services in Russia have already been restored,” Russia’s Digital Ministry said in a statement, adding that the app was also experiencing outages outside Russia.
“We are working hard to determine the cause of the incident.” “As for Russian carriers, their networks are operating normally.”
A Reuters correspondent in Moscow said Telegram, YouTube and Vkontakte were down for about 90 minutes.
Shortly after the outage, several previously blocked social media apps, including Instagram and Facebook, suddenly became available in Russia on Tuesday, a Reuters correspondent in Moscow said.
Reuters reporters can now browse Instagram without the need for a virtual private network (VPN) for the first time since the block was imposed shortly after Russia sent tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine in February 2022. Ta.
Telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor has moved to block some foreign tech companies, including Metaplatforms’ Facebook and Instagram.
Moscow has long sought to improve its domestic internet infrastructure (Runet), even disconnecting it from the global internet for testing.
Anton Gorelkin, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, said that although the cause of the telegraph blackout is unknown, it would be a mistake to immediately blame the Russian state, and that Russia may have tried to cut off foreign resources in advance. He pointed out that there is a “conspiracy theory” that it was. Heading into the presidential election in March.
“Such incidents have and will continue to occur for a variety of reasons, from human error to hacker attacks,” he said.
“More important is how long it will take to resolve the failure. The scale of the damage to the Russian economy will depend on this.”
Additional reporting by agency
