Russia’s War on Telegram Hillariously Backfired, Claims Pavel Durov

Russia’s marketing campaign to dam Telegram and prohibit Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) triggered a nationwide banking outage on April 3, disrupting card funds, ATMs, and digital transfers country-wide.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov claims the app nonetheless has 65 million every day energetic customers in Russia regardless of the total block.

Censorship Backfires on Russia’s Financial Infrastructure

According to The Moscow Times, Sberbank, VTB, and T-Bank all reported widespread service failures on April 3.

🇷🇺 Major banks have gone down in Russia — a widespread outage affecting Sberbank, T-Bank, VTB, and SBP: card funds, QR funds, and Bluetooth transactions aren’t working, and transfers are failing. The outage has impacted the complete nation, with customers reporting they can’t… pic.twitter.com/jp4XRD7kga

— RusWar (@ruswar) April 3, 2026

Payment terminals displayed errors, ATMs stopped shelling out money, and cellular banking apps went offline for hours.

Fyodor Muzalevsky, technical director at IT safety agency RTM Group, advised reporters that the VPN-blocking measures probably contributed to the disruption.

Preliminary studies pointed to inaccurate blocking of IP addresses tied to banking infrastructure.

The Moscow metro reportedly allowed free passage by turnstiles. Some outlets and public venues, together with not less than one zoo, switched to cash-only funds.

Telegram Holds Ground Despite Full Block

Russia’s web regulator, Roskomnadzor, started throttling Telegram in February 2026, with a nationwide block taking effect around April 1.

Telegram was banned in Russia — but 50M+ Russians nonetheless use it every day through VPNs. The authorities has spent years making an attempt to ban VPNs too. Their blocking makes an attempt simply triggered an enormous banking failure — money briefly grew to become the one cost technique nationwide.

— Pavel Durov (@durov) April 4, 2026

The push aimed emigrate customers to MAX, a state-backed messaging app managed by a Gazprom subsidiary.

However, Durov’s numbers recommend the technique has failed.

“For accuracy, over 50M Russians ship not less than one message day-after-day, with 65M every day energetic customers in Russia general regardless of the ban,” wrote Durov.

Before the restrictions, Telegram had roughly 96 million customers in Russia, based on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The app serves as a main information supply, communication software, and even a military coordination channel for Russian troopers in Ukraine.

VPN Adoption Surges as Kremlin Doubles Down

Russia’s Digital Development Ministry ordered main on-line platforms to dam VPN customers by April 15. Proposed laws would additionally impose fines of as much as 30,000 rubles on people caught utilizing unauthorized VPNs.

As of January 2026, Roskomnadzor had already restricted greater than 400 VPN providers, a 70% improve from autumn 2025.

Yet VPN utilization continues to climb. Authorities in 83 Russian areas have imposed cellular web shutdowns not less than as soon as since May 2025, usually limiting entry to a government-curated whitelist of accredited websites.

These measures have made VPNs a every day necessity for hundreds of thousands.

The April 3 banking outage illustrates the collateral dangers of aggressive web filtering.

Moscow might regulate its method or press ahead with deeper restrictions earlier than the April 15 deadline. The transfer they make might decide the subsequent part of this digital standoff.

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