Russia Warns of Full WhatsApp Ban, Pushes Users Toward State-Backed ‘Max’ App

Moscow’s gambit echoes the 1873–1905 Tsarist censorship committees and, more recently, China’s 2009 expulsion of Facebook and Twitter that cleared the runway for WeChat and Weibo. The long arc is a century-old tug-of-war between sovereign information control and transnational networks: radio jammers in the Cold War, the 2012–18 attempts to corral Telegram, now encrypted chat. Each turn tightens Russia’s digital sovereignty project, shifting power from U.S.-based platforms to Kremlin-aligned ecosystems that lack end-to-end encryption, easing surveillance while nurturing domestic tech champions. If the ban proceeds, it accelerates the balkanisation of the internet—a reversal of the 1990s dream of a borderless web—and cements a precedent other states watching the Ukraine-era sanctions may copy over the next half-century, fracturing global communications much as 19th-century empires controlled telegraph cables.