A major disruption affecting Telegram could stem from internal adjustments within the company or from actions taken by Roskomnadzor, which together with security agencies tests critical infrastructure. This assessment was voiced by Andrey Svintsov, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications, in a conversation with socialbites.ca. Roskomnadzor has framed the wide outage in RuNet as the result of a distributed denial of service attack.
Svintsov elaborated that several factors could be responsible. One possibility is that Telegram implemented additional settings for the Russian segment to comply with differences between domestic and foreign legislation. In Russia, laws mandate the removal of content published within the country, so automated blocks are plausible. Such blocks could arise automatically or be applied manually, but typically they would affect not the entire messenger but specific posts or channels that conflict with current federal laws. A second possibility is that Roskomnadzor, in collaboration with law enforcement, is testing particular elements of critical infrastructure. These tests could be designed to identify vulnerabilities or temporarily slow down traffic to certain services as part of routine checks.
Svintsov noted that such testing by law enforcement and inspection bodies is a normal practice. He argued that without periodic testing it would be impossible to gauge how effectively different units operate. His point was that all sectors rely on occasional maintenance, updates, or vulnerability assessments, including telecom operators, broadcasting services, and other essential systems such as gas networks and pipelines. He stressed that regular rebooting or testing of critical components is part of keeping complex networks resilient.
On the afternoon of August 21, Telegram experienced a broad outage. For many users in Russia, both the mobile and desktop versions of the messaging platform ceased functioning, with channels and messages failing to load. The disruption disproportionately affected users in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. In many cases, the app resumed operation when users connected through a VPN, and foreign users encountered no persistent issues.
A number of other popular services also reported difficulties in Russia, including WhatsApp, Wikipedia, Steam, Twitch and Discord. Roskomnadzor attributed the ripple effect to a DDoS assault aimed at telecom operators and central infrastructure, which congested networks and hampered service delivery. Earlier statements from Roskomnadzor indicated no immediate need to curtail Telegrams activity within Russia. The situation highlighted the ongoing tension between regulatory oversight and the delivery of diverse online services across the RuNet.