- Telegram has upgraded its anti-censorship protocol amid Russia’s blocks
- Telegram’s CEO still urges people in Russia to “stock up on more VPNs”
- Durov also suggests avoiding using Russian apps while connected to a VPN
Telegram’s CEO is urging people in Russia to “stock up on more VPNs” as the messaging platform implements new technology to combat the government-imposed ban.
On Saturday, Pavel Durov announced an upgrade to the app’s anti-censorship protocol designed to keep users online despite interference.
The update follows reports that Telegram connectivity in Russia dropped to just 5% on Friday, according to data from the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) and cited by Novaya Gazeta.
As Telegram hardens its own infrastructure, reliable VPN services remain a necessity to mask users’ IP addresses and bypass the restrictions.
Durov also suggests avoiding Russian apps while connected to a VPN. This advice comes amid reports that the Kremlin is successfully detecting and blocking active VPN connections.
The battle for Telegram
After months of intermittent disturbances, Russian authorities moved block the country’s most popular messaging service entirely in March.
Data from OONI reveals a rapid deterioration in service quality over the past 30 days, culminating in a record 95% failure rate on Friday morning. This is a sharp escalation from the 79% failure rate recorded just 24 hours earlier.
The increase in blocking triggered an immediate response from Telegram’s engineering team, which deployed the upgraded anti-censorship protocol within a day of the blackout. In his announcement, Durov urged all Russian users to immediately update their apps to maintain a stable connection.
We have upgraded Telegram’s anti-censorship protocol. Users in Russia are advised to update their apps to stay connected. Thanks to the digital resistance of the Russian people, Telegram usage remained stable over the past week despite the full ban.11 April 2026
While Moscow claims the restrictions are necessary to combat criminal activity and protect personal data, Durov claims the ban is purely a political maneuver. He claims the government is trying to force citizens into “MAX,” a state-controlled messaging alternative.
This view is shared by several prominent digital rights organizations. Sarkis Darbinyan, an expert at RKS Global, told TechRadar earlier this month that the crackdown is a calculated attempt to push the population into the state-sanctioned digital ecosystem “by any means necessary.”
Telegram is currently the last major holdout in the country; WhatsApp, Signal and Discord are already blocked along with Meta-owned platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Are VPNs still a viable option?
After the initial Telegram ban, government official Andrey Svintsov claimed that the media regulator, Roskomnadzor, now has the technical capacity to selectively restrict VPN traffic, suggesting that circumvention tools would soon become ineffective.
However, these claims have yet to match reality. Millions of users continue to bypass restrictions using VPN protocols that hide encrypted traffic as standard web browsing.
In a recent update, Pavel Durov confirmed that over 50 million Russians still use Telegram daily via VPNs.
To be precise, over 50 million Russians send at least one message every day with 65 million daily active users in Russia despite the ban. Monthly active users remain to be seen, but could easily be twice as high.April 4, 2026
However, the Kremlin seems determined to reverse this. Last week, Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadaev launched a plan to “reduce VPN use” that introduced new blocking mandates for companies, along with fines and fees for individual VPN users.
While some censorship-resistant VPNs, including Amnezia VPN, Windscribe and NymVPN, have told TechRadar that their products still work in the country, the situation is changing rapidly.
Because of that, Durov’s advice to “stock up” on multiple services is a practical necessity. This means that if an app becomes unavailable, you can quickly jump to other alternatives.
Both Windscribe and Amenzia VPN offer secure free apps specifically designed to defeat Russia’s blocking. Proton VPN Free and PrivadoVPN Free are then the best recommendations in our best free VPN guide.
