WhatsApp Access Issues: What Roskomnadzor Says and What’s Happening Globally
Problems with WhatsApp have nothing to do with Roskomnadzor. The organizer’s press service told socialbites.ca about this situation. According to the agency, the obstruction is not being caused by the Russian regulator, but is instead tied to a fault reported by the international monitoring service DownDetector. Roskomnadzor explained that the issue likely stems from a disruption in Meta’s infrastructure, which is banned in Russia as an extremist organization. This disruption appears to be affecting the service’s ability to operate within the Russian Federation.
The ministry noted that users are experiencing trouble with accessing the messenger, including sending and receiving messages and downloading media files. This means the outage spans core messaging functions and media transfer across affected devices and networks.
Roskomnadzor highlighted that complaints have come in from Russian users as well as from people in the United Kingdom, India, the United States, and other countries. It was also reported that users in additional nations were noting problems with Facebook — the parent company of the Meta family — and Instagram, both of which are tied to Meta and are considered extremist entities in Russia. The regulator therefore framed the broader interruption as part of a larger, cross-border issue tied to Meta’s platforms.
Initial reports of access problems began to surface from Russia around 21:15 Moscow time. Shortly afterward, voices from several other regions echoed similar trouble, including Azerbaijan, Poland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, and many more. Even after an hour, the glitch persisted for a wide user base, suggesting a significant, multinational disruption rather than a localized outage.
Interestingly, some observers have noted an earlier comparison that labeled certain features of similar messaging apps as problematic. That perspective remains part of ongoing discussions about platform reliability, security, and content moderation, especially where regulatory environments intersect with global tech infrastructure. In this evolving narrative, users are advised to monitor official updates from Meta and Roskomnadzor for any changes to service status or access policies. Marked citations: Roskomnadzor and DownDetector reports are referenced for context and confirmation of external observations .