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A woman using her smartphone in the Russian State Duma building in central Moscow. Photo: Russian State Duma
On the seventh day of a citywide internet shutdown in Moscow, MPs in Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, have begun running into the same connectivity and communications outages as their fellow citizens. The lawmakers described the situation during a portion of a plenary session closed to the media, according to a report by the Kremlin-aligned newspaper Vedomosti.
With internet access and mobile service not working at the State Duma building for the second day in a row, MPs have been walking over to a nearby bank branch to try to catch a signal.
Communist Party lawmaker Sergei Obukhov complained that his email was not working, while others said that even the official service connection, provided by Russia’s largest telecommunications company MTS, was down.
An MP from the Just Russia party, Mikhail Delyagin, wrote that his fellow lawmakers cannot even exchange messages through the “national” state-backed messenger Max, actively promoted by the Russian government in place of its more popular — and more secure — alternatives, such as Meta’s WhatsApp and Pavel Durov’s Telegram.
“I fully approve. MPs should be united with the people. When United Russia, with its suffocation policy, or ‘cooling,’ finishes off the sewer system, then the toilets in the Duma should be turned off too... Bring on [the] digital detox and freedom from bad news. No news is the best news. Parliament and the people are united. That is true democracy,” Delyagin wrote on his Telegram channel.
State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin responded to the criticism by saying the communications restrictions are a matter of national security.
There has been no mobile internet, no WiFi and no mobile service for the past week in central Moscow and in some northern and southern districts of the city. Residents have reported being unable to connect in the city center and on some subway lines. In some districts, only certain websites from a government “whitelist” were available.
Businesses in Moscow have reportedly lost up to 5 billion rubles because of the shutdowns, and Muscovites have been actively searching for walkie-talkies, paper maps, and wired internet to cope during the outages, according to a report by the independent Russian outlet Important Stories.
Courier services, taxis, car sharing, and retail businesses were hit hardest. The restrictions are affecting small and midsize businesses first. Moscow is the country’s largest consumer market for online commerce, according to an industry association cited by Kommersant.
Similar issues were also documented in St. Petersburg. Telecom operators say the disruptions are occurring due to “external” restrictions, while the Kremlin described them as measures taken to “ensure security,” adding that they will last “as long as necessary.”
“I think neither citizens nor anyone else can have doubts here that the main thing is ensuring security. I repeat, everything is in strict accordance with existing legislation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, adding that the problems businesses are facing “should become a topic of discussion in the relevant agencies.”
Market participants also point to distortions of competition due to the fact that the “whitelist” includes only a few large companies. The registry of websites that should remain accessible during restrictions has previously included, among others, services provided by Russia’s largest tech company Yandex (such as its taxi hailing app, online browser, and food delivery service).
Moscow residents also faced mobile communications disruptions in the spring of 2025. Against that backdrop, wired internet providers have increased their subscriber numbers and revenue.