Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ Telegram will not be restored in Russia, and tighter restrictions will be imposed on mobile phone ownership, says Sergey Boyarsky, head of the State Duma IT Committee. He cites scammers, pro-Ukrainian sabotage, and drone attacks as the reasons behind these moves. ⬇️

2/ In a wide-ranging interview with the St Petersburg online newspaper Fontanka, Boyarsky has explained the thinking behind the government's new restrictions on Telegram. He says that "Telegram doesn't comply with Russian Federation law, and hasn't done so for many years."

3/ "The requirements are simple, basic: localise user data within the Russian Federation, remove prohibited information (extremism, terrorism), and cooperate with law enforcement agencies to solve serious crimes (for example, the Crocus [terroist attack] case)."

4/ He says that Telegram and its founder, Pavel Durov, have not been cooperative, although they are still in dialogue with the Russian government.

5/ Boyarsky focuses on the large-scale problem of scammers on Telegram. According to him, the Russian government-sponsored app MAX – which the government is attempting to force people onto – does not have this problem.

6/ "Unfortunately, someone became a dropper [prepaid task scammer], which is a criminal offense, and rented out their MAX account. But they'll most likely be found because the account is linked to their Gosuslugi [Russian government portal] account.

7/ "And if you rent out your WhatsApp account, which is banned, or your Telegram account, law enforcement won't have any leads. We saw MAX's report on how many frauds were prevented in January—thousands of cases."

8/ Russians are being scammed out of vast sums of money by fraudsters on Telegram. Ukraine is blamed for a lot of this activity, with money from scams claimed to be going to fund the Ukrainian war effort.

9/ There have also been numerous instances in Russia, Ukraine, and elsewhere in Europe of individuals being tricked or bribed over Telegram into carrying out attacks on infrastructure or people. Reports of such activity have appeared virtually daily.

10/ To prevent Ukrainian drones using Russian mobile connections for navigation and remote control, tighter restrictions are also being introduced on SIM cards and IMEI numbers. Each person will be limited to owning no more than 20 SIM cards, all of which have to be registered.

11/ Boyarsky says that "it's not just phones that have IMEI numbers, but everything else, including drones. Those flying from border areas are sometimes equipped with SIM cards that were somehow smuggled out of the Russian Federation."

12/ "And to prevent this IMEI connection between the drone and our SIM card from working, such a database must also appear."

13/ Telegram has been a vital resource for residents of Russian border areas to warn them of Ukrainian attacks, but this will now end. Russia has instead whitelisted MAX so that it will work even when mobile Internet is blocked. However, "Telegram will never be there."

14/ "Max Messenger communicates through closed channels with our government agencies", says Boyarsky. "And Telegram is a foreign network. I simply cannot understand how we can trust foreign networks to warn our citizens about a missile threat. It's bizarre."

15/ Strikingly, Boyarsky never talks in the interview – nor is he asked by Fontanka, a pro-government outlet – about the impact of restricting Telegram on the Russian military, which has been the subject of many complaints by Russian warbloggers and serving military personnel.

16/ With Putin's spokesman Dmitri Peskov saying publicly that he can't imagine that Telegram could be of any value to the army, it seems clear that the Russian government aims to simply ignore the havoc that the current throttling is having on military communications. /end

Source:
fontanka.ru/2026/02/15/762…