Russian authorities said Thursday they have imposed restrictions on Apple's video calling service FaceTime, the latest step in an effort to tighten control over the internet and communications online.
State internet regulator Roskomnadzor alleged in a statement that the service is being “used to organize and conduct terrorist activities on the territory of the country, to recruit perpetrators (and) commit fraud and other crimes against our citizens.” Apple did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The Russian regulator also announced that it has blocked Snapchat, a messaging app for sharing photos, videos and text messages, citing the same grounds it gave for restricting FaceTime. It said that it took the action Oct. 10 even though it only reported the move on Thursday.
Under President Vladimir Putin, authorities have engaged in deliberate and multipronged efforts to rein in the internet. They have adopted restrictive laws and banned websites and platforms that don't comply. Technology also has been perfected to monitor and manipulate online traffic.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the government blocked major social media like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Access to YouTube was disrupted last year in what experts called deliberate throttling of the widely popular site by the authorities. The Kremlin blamed YouTube owner Google for not properly maintaining its hardware in Russia.
While it’s still possible to circumvent some of the restrictions by using virtual private network services, those are routinely blocked, too.
Authorities further restricted internet access this summer with widespread shutdowns of cellphone internet connections. Officials have insisted the measure was needed to thwart Ukrainian drone attacks, but experts argued it was another step to tighten internet control. In dozens of regions, “white lists” of government-approved sites and services that are supposed to function despite a shutdown have been introduced.
The government also has acted against popular messaging platforms. Encrypted messenger Signal and another popular app, Viber, were blocked in 2024. This year the authorities banned calls via WhatsApp, the most popular messaging app in Russia, and Telegram, a close second. Roskomnadzor justified the measure by saying the two apps were being used for criminal activities.
At the same time, authorities actively promoted a “national” messenger app called MAX, which critics see as a surveillance tool. The platform, touted by developers and officials as a one-stop shop for messaging, online government services, making payments and more, openly declares it will share user data with authorities upon request. Experts also say it doesn’t use end-to-end encryption.
Earlier this week, the government also said it was blocking Roblox, a popular online game platform, saying the step aimed at protecting children from illicit content and “pedophiles who meet minors directly in the game’s chats and then move on to real life.”
Stanislav Seleznev, cyber security expert and lawyer with the Net Freedom rights group, told The Associated Press that Russian law views any platform where users can message each other as “organizers of dissemination of information.”
This label mandates that platforms have an account with Roskomnadzor so that it could communicate its demands, and give Russia's security service, the FSB, access to accounts of their users for monitoring; those failing to comply are in violation and can get blocked, Seleznev said.
He suggested that these regulations could have been applied to both Roblox and FaceTime.
Roblox in October was the second most popular game platform in Russia, with nearly 8 million monthly users, according to media monitoring group Mediascope.
Seleznev estimated that possibly tens of millions of Russians have been using FaceTime, especially after calls were banned on WhatsApp and Telegram. He called the restrictions against the service “predictable” and warned that other sites failing to cooperate with Roskomnadzor "will be blocked, that’s obvious.”
FILE - Passengers look at their smartphones while on the subway in Moscow, Russia, March 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
A woman looks at her smartphone in central Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
FILE - A woman looks at her smartphone on a bus in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Outdated intelligence likely led to the United States carrying out a deadly missile strike on an elementary school in Iran that killed over 165 people, many of them children, in the opening hours of the conflict, according to a U.S. official and a second person briefed on findings of a preliminary U.S military investigation into the incident.
The bombing of the school and its casualties involving children has become a focal point of the war, and if ultimately confirmed to be at the hands of the U.S., would also stand among the highest civilian casualty events caused by the American military operations in the last two decades.
President Donald Trump initially blamed Iran for the attack, later said he wasn’t certain who was to blame, and then said he would accept the results of the Pentagon’s investigation. The issue took on added urgency on Wednesday after the New York Times first reported that a preliminary investigation found that the U.S. was responsible.
U.S. Central Command relied on target coordinates for the strike using outdated data provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the person familiar with the preliminary finding.
The agency did not respond to a request for comment.
The preliminary finding prompted immediate calls for more information from the Pentagon. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “the investigation is still ongoing.”
Both the U.S. official and the person familiar with the matter spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
Dozens of Democratic senators demanded answers from the Trump administration on Wednesday as a growing body of evidence suggested that the U.S. was likely responsible for a strike at an elementary school in Iran that killed over 165 people, many of them children.
The letter from more than 45 senators pressed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on whether the U.S. was culpable for the strike and what previous analysis of the building had been done. The senators also raised concerns about the Pentagon hollowing-out a congressionally mandated office set up specifically to reduce civilian casualties.
“Under this administration, budgetary and personnel cuts at the Department have robbed military commands of crucial resources to prevent and respond to civilian casualties,” the senators wrote. Those include cuts at U.S. Central Command, whose forces are leading the military campaign against Iran, and the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, which was signed into law in 2022 as part of a Pentagon ambition to reduce death tolls from strikes.
The revelation could threaten to erode public support in the U.S. effort against Iran at a time when Trump, who as a candidate railed against American involvement in “stupid” overseas wars, faces persistent questions about the purpose and of the conflict and what would bring it to an end.
One former Pentagon official said the Feb. 28 strike that hit Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School, which is located near a neighboring base for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, came as a natural result of changes made by the Trump administration to reduce staff to mitigate civilian harm and Hegseth’s emphasis on lethality over legality.
There are several indications that the strike on the school may have been avoidable.
It happened Saturday morning, the start of the Iranian school week, when the building was full of young children. Satellite analysis by the AP shows that the school, as well as other targets struck the same day, had characteristics visible from the air that could have identified them as civilian sites before they were struck.
The AP reported last week that satellite images, expert analysis, a U.S. official and public information released by the U.S. military all suggested it was likely a U.S. strike. That evidence grew stronger on Monday, as new footage emerged showing what experts identified as a U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missile slamming into the military compound as smoke was already rising from the area where the school was located.
Publicly available satellite imagery shows the school building was part of the military compound until about 2017, when a new wall was added to separate the two. A watchtower on the property was also removed. Around the same time, the imagery shows the walls surrounding the building were painted with murals in vibrant colors, primarily blue and pink, so bright they're visible from space
The school was clearly labeled as such in online maps and has an easily-accessible website full of information about students, teachers and administrators.
International law governing warfare bars strikes on structures, vehicles and people that are not military objectives and combatants. Civilian homes, schools, medical facilities and cultural sites are generally off limits for military strikes. The proximity of a school to a valid military target does not change its status as a civilian site, said Elise Baker, a senior staff lawyer at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based nonprofit think tank.
If the U.S. is found responsible, said Sen. Tim Kaine during a briefing with journalists on Wednesday: “It’s either we’ve changed our traditional targeting rules or we made a mistake.”
“If we’ve changed our traditional targeting rules and we no longer provide the same level of protection for civilians, that would be tragic,” Kaine said.
Some Republicans, too, are sounding alarms.
Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota told reporters that an investigation needs to “get to the bottom of it,” and then “admit if you know whose fault it is.”
If the U.S. was behind it, Cramer said, the military must “do everything you can to eliminate those mistakes going forward.”
He added: “But you also can’t undo it.”
Congress directed the Pentagon to create the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence in late 2022 as part of the wide-ranging annual defense authorization bill, which passed both chambers with broad bipartisan support. The bill said the center was to “institutionalize and advance knowledge, practices, and tools for preventing, mitigating, and responding to civilian harm.”
The measure put into law an initiative that had already been started by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin earlier that year. The 36-step action plan was “ambitious and necessary,” Austin said at the time.
In April 2023, that office had a full-time director hired by the Army and an initial core staff of 30 civilians, according to a 2024 Pentagon report that said that the workforce was expected to grow.
Wes Bryant began working there in 2024 as the Branch Chief of Civil Harm Assessments. One of the things the office was discussing was updating the “no strike list,” he said, a series of civilian targets in other countries that the Pentagon keeps. When he was working at the Pentagon, it was well known that the list was out-of-date, he said. But under Hegseth, the office's size was slashed and the work on updating the no-strike lists stopped, he said.
“They have no budget. They're just sitting there trying to maintain any semblance of the mission,” he said.
Capt. Tim Hawkins, the spokesman for U.S. Central Command, denied reports that the military command only had a single person assigned to the mission but would not offer any further details, citing the ongoing investigation.
Frankel reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Konstantin Toropin and Joey Cappelletti in Washington contributed to this report.
The arm of a deceased person is seen protruding from the rubble as rescue workers and residents search in the aftermath a strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)
Rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of a strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)
Rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of a strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)
Rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of a strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)
Rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of a strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)
