Russia Partially Blocks WhatsApp & Telegram Voice Calls While Promoting State ‘Max’ Messenger

Moscow’s move echoes China’s 2009–2013 tightening of the Great Firewall—when Beijing forced Google and foreign social networks to localise data or leave—and also recalls the Soviet 1980s jamming of Western radio broadcasts: both cases show a state shrinking the information commons in the name of security. Since 2012 Russia has built a ‘sovereign Runet’ architecture (deep-packet inspection, domestic DNS, state ID log-ins); the Ukraine war accelerated that trajectory, turning earlier failed bans (e.g., Telegram 2018–2020) into more sophisticated, targeted throttling. Over a 100-year horizon this is another notch in the cyclical contest between central authority and communication technologies: each new medium—printing press, telegraph, satellite TV, now end-to-end encryption—initially outpaces control, then is corralled or supplanted by sovereign alternatives. Whether Russians adopt MAX or simply migrate to VPN-shielded tools will signal if today’s partial block is a decisive step toward a fenced-in RuNet, or just the latest round in an enduring cat-and-mouse between states and encrypted speech.