Russia's internet crackdown leads to a spring of growing discontent

Several dozen people lined up outside a presidential administration building on a sunny spring weekend in central Moscow as police stood nearby and watched them closely.

The people were lodging complaints about the government's intensifying crackdown on the internet that has seen regular shutdowns of cellphone internet connections, blocked popular messaging apps and cut access to thousands of other websites and digital services.

It was the latest sign of the growing anger and frustration over the restrictions that have disrupted the daily lives of Russians, hurt businesses and drawn criticism even from Kremlin supporters.

Knowing that any unauthorized demonstrations are harshly suppressed, activists have tried to organize authorized rallies, plastered posters on walls and notice boards, and filed lawsuits. Industry leaders pleaded with authorities to repeal the measures.

Even the leader of Armenia delivered a not-so-veiled barb at Russia during a televised meeting with President Vladimir Putin on April 1. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan noted that in Armenia, “our social media, for example, is 100% free. There are no restrictions whatsoever.”

An unsmiling Putin stared at Pashinyan with slightly raised eyebrows.

The clampdown not only serves to control what websites Russians can see, but also has thrown digital life into disarray, making it difficult to order taxis and deliveries, pay for goods and services electronically, and stay in touch with friends and family.

Politician and Kremlin critic Boris Nadezhdin spoke for many Russians who are upset about the internet clampdown when he said in an interview with The Associated Press: “This infuriates a huge number of people.”

For years, Russia has sought to take the internet under total government control and potentially cut it off from the rest of the world, blocking tens of thousands of websites, messaging apps and social media platforms that refuse to cooperate with the authorities.

Internet users have gotten used to circumventing the restrictions by using virtual private networks, or VPNs, even as the government has been actively blocking those, too.

But last year, the restrictions reached a whole new level: sweeping shutdowns of cellphone internet connections -– and sometimes broadband, too -– leaving only a handful of websites and apps on government-approved “white lists.”

Officials claimed the drastic measures were needed to thwart Ukrainian drones relying on Russian cellphone internet for navigation as Kyiv tries to strike back during Moscow's 4-year-old full-scale invasion.

But the shutdowns hit remote regions that have never been targeted by Ukraine's drones, with ordinary people and businesses decrying the measures as detrimental.

The Kremlin has gone after the country's two most popular messaging apps — WhatsApp and Telegram — while simultaneously promoting a state-backed “national” app called MAX, widely seen as a surveillance tool.

At first, voice and video calls on WhatsApp and Telegram were blocked. Then, sending messages became effectively impossible, too, without using a VPN.

Last week, Digital and Communications Minister Maksut Shadayev said his ministry received orders to further decrease the use of VPNs. Unconfirmed media reports said his ministry proposed a flurry of new measures against VPNs. The ministry did not respond to a request for comment sent by AP.

Lawyer Sarkis Darbinyan, co-founder of the RKS Global digital rights group, told AP the goal of the authorities is to drive internet users into a “digital ghetto” of Russian, government-controlled apps and platforms.

“The internet is no longer this universal digital good,” he said.

In recent weeks, a growing number of business leaders in Russia have voiced concern about the sweeping restrictions and urged authorities to take a more moderate approach.

Alexander Shokhin, head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, told Putin at a recent forum of the group that cellphone internet shutdowns “made life difficult for both businesses and citizens.”

“Given the high level of mobile technology penetration in our lives, we hope that a systemic, balanced solution will be found,” said Shokhin, a government minister in the 1990s and a member of the ruling United Russia party since the 2000s.

Putin was onstage with Shokhin and spoke immediately after him but didn't address the issue.

A similar plea came from CEOs of two of Russia’s four cellphone operators at a telecommunications conference last week. Sergei Anokhin of Beeline and Khachatur Pombukhchan of Megafon said that instead of cellphone internet shutdowns, operators could just identify suspicious users and restrict them, the Russian news agency Interfax reported.

“This would make life significantly easier for people, for clients,” Pombukhchan said.

Prominent IT entrepreneur Natalya Kasperskaya lambasted Roskomnadzor, blaming its intensifying efforts to block VPNs for a brief outage last weekend of banking and other services.

“There’s no technical way to block VPNs without disrupting the entire internet,” she wrote in a post on Telegram. “So, comrades, take screenshots of interesting websites, withdraw as much cash as possible, and get ready to listen to radio reports about foreign enemies who have blocked our once-beloved RuNet,” — referring to the Russian internet.

Roskomnadzor denied involvement, and Kasperskaya later apologized in a separate post, but she called for dialogue between the authorities and the IT sector, stressing that “technical decisions sometimes cause downright shock and a desire to at least get an explanation.”

Activists from Moscow to Vladivostok in the Far East have tried to organize rallies against internet restrictions since late February.

Knowing that unauthorized demonstrations are harshly suppressed and government critics are routinely jailed, they acted cautiously and sought authorization for the gatherings in accordance with strict protest laws. In most cases, those were rejected, and some activists were even arrested on various charges.

But people managed to hold small pickets in a few cities. In others, activists plastered flyers and banners on walls and public notice boards decrying the restrictions.

Opposition politician Nadezhdin, his supporters and other activist groups have filed for permission to hold rallies in dozens of cities on April 12, when Russia marks Cosmonautics Day, honoring the 1961 flight of Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space.

“We’re filing for authorization (and saying) we’re marking Cosmonautics Day,” Nadezhdin says with a subtle smile. “Our slogans will be (about the fact that) cosmonautics is impossible without science, technology and progress, and progress, science and technology development is impossible without connectivity, without communication, without the internet.”

Nadezhdin says he is determined to increase pressure on authorities despite the crackdown. Public frustration over the restrictions is “enormous,” and people are ready to take part in protests that are authorized and safe, he added.

Moscow-based opposition politician Yulia Galyamina echoed his sentiment in a video she recorded last weekend near the presidential administration, where she and others filed their formal complaints, saying the discontent “is truly widespread.”

“The more there is public outcry over the blocking of the internet, Telegram in particular, and depriving us of the possibility to communicate with each other, interact, express our political position, the bigger the effect will be,” she said.

Opposition politician Boris Nadezhdin holds a poster while speaking to journalists, in Moscow, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo)

Activists gather outside a presidential administration building, in Moscow, Saturday, April 4, 2026, to sign a petition against internet restrictions. (AP Photo)

FILE - Russian President Vladimir Putin, center right, and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, left, meet in the Kremlin, in Moscow, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Pavel Bednyakov, Pool, File)

Women hold their cellphones in Red Square, in Moscow, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

FILE - A woman checks her phone as she walks through Red Square at sunset, in Moscow, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Pavel Bednyakov, File)

Semiofficial news agencies in Iran published a chart Thursday suggesting the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard put sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz during the war, a likely pressure tactic as Iran, Israel and the United States are now in an uneasy, two-week ceasefire ahead of possible negotiations in Islamabad.

Meanwhile, in unusually strong language, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres “unequivocally” condemned Israeli strikes in Lebanon that killed and injured hundreds Wednesday after the ceasefire was announced, according to a statement by his spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric.

Israel has said the ceasefire agreement does not extend to its war in Lebanon with the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group, although Iran and mediator Pakistan said it does. Sirens sounded in northern Israel early Thursday as Hezbollah claimed it was attacking with rocket fire.

Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz again Wednesday in response to Israeli attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Here is the latest:

Iran’s negotiating team for talks with the United States will arrive Thursday night in Islamabad, the Iranian ambassador there said.

Reza Amiri Moghadam made the comment on X, without identifying who was on the Iranian team.

He wrote that the “Iranian delegation arrives tonight in Islamabad for serious talks based on 10 points proposed by Iran.”

Those points include Iran enriching uranium, maintaining its control of the Strait of Hormuz and other issues that have been nonstarters in the past for U.S. President Donald Trump.

The White House has repeatedly described the 10 points issued by Iran as false.

Moghadam wrote that the Iranians would come to Islamabad despite “skepticism of Iranian public opinion due to repeated ceasefire violations by Israeli regime to sabotage the diplomatic initiative.”

That refers to Israel’s strikes on Lebanon, which Israel and the U.S. have said wasn’t included in the shaky ceasefire.

Oil rose again to above $97 a barrel and Asian stocks were trading lower Thursday on skepticism over a fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran.

Brent crude was up 2.9% to $97.46 per barrel. It previously fell briefly to below $92 following the temporary ceasefire announcement.

Benchmark U.S. crude was 3.7% higher Thursday at $97.94 per barrel.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 dropped 0.8% to 55,855.57, while South Korea’s Kospi lost 1.7% to 5,773.03.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.2% to 25,831.21. The Shanghai Composite index was down 0.8% to 3,961.31.

Ship-tracking data from trade data and analytics platform Kpler showed only four vessels with their Automatic Identification System trackers on passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, the first day of the ceasefire.

However, this total does not include so-called “dark fleet” vessels — those with their AIS trackers turned off.

Many of those “dark fleet” ships carry sanctioned Iranian crude oil out to the open market.

U.S. President Donald Trump issued an online statement Thursday insisting that his surge of warships and troops will remain around Iran “until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with.”

Trump’s comments on his Truth Social platform appear to be a way to pressure Iran as uncertainty hangs over the tentative two-week ceasefire now holding in the war.

“If for any reason it is not, which is highly unlikely, then the ‘Shootin’ Starts,’ bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before,” Trump wrote.

He also insisted Iran would not be able to build nuclear weapons and “the Strait of Hormuz WILL BE OPEN & SAFE.” That comes as vessels are not moving through that waterway, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all oil and natural gas traded once passed.

A New York-based think tank is warning that the tentative ceasefire in the Iran war “hovers on the verge of collapse.”

The Soufan Center said the Israeli strikes on Lebanon on Wednesday risked the deal falling apart.

“Even if Lebanon was formally outside the deal, the scale of Israel’s strikes was likely to be viewed as escalatory, nonetheless,” it wrote in an analysis published Thursday.

“Israel’s strikes can be understood both as an effort to drive a wedge between Iran and its proxies and as a response to being allegedly sidelined in the original ceasefire discussions.”

The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound reopened with dawn prayer Thursday after being closed for the duration of the Iran war, according to Jerusalem’s Islamic Waqf, the Jordanian religious authority that administers the compound.

Jerusalem’s police said Wednesday that it would lift restrictions on all holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City starting Thursday morning. It added that hundreds of officers and volunteers would be active in the city.

Access had been prohibited altogether, or restricted to a few dozen faithful, at Christian, Jewish and Muslim sites during the now-paused conflict, when missile attacks from Iran often sent Jerusalem residents into shelters.

The restrictions subdued Lent, Passover and Ramadan celebrations for many in some of the holiest sites for adherents of Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

But they’re lifted just in time for Orthodox Christians, who celebrate Easter (Pascha) on Sunday, a week after Catholic and Protestant observances.

FILE - Two police officers walk in front of an anti-U.S. billboard depicting American aircraft being caught by Iranian armed forces in a fishing net beneath the words in Farsi, "The Strait of Hormuz will remain closed, The entire Persian Gulf is our hunting ground," in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

Ali, 4, holds a toy horse next to the tent his family uses as a shelter after fleeing Israeli bombardment in southern Lebanon, in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, April 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Smoke rises following several Israeli airstrikes in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, April 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Firefighters, first responders, and volunteers work on smoldering debris at the site of an Israeli airstrike that struck an apartment building in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, April 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)