- Telegram has improved its anti-censorship protocol amid Russian blocks
- Telegram CEO continues to urge Russians to “stock up on multiple VPNs”
- Durov also suggests avoiding using Russian apps while connected to a VPN.
Telegram CEO urges people in Russia to “stock up on multiple VPNs” as the messaging platform rolls out new technology to combat government-imposed ban.
On Saturday, Pavel Durov announced an update to the app’s anti-censorship protocol designed to keep users online despite interference.
The update follows reports that Telegram connectivity in Russia plummeted to just 5% on Friday, according to data from the Open Observatory for Network Interference (OONI) and cited by Novaya Gazeta.
While Telegram is beefing up its own infrastructure, reliable VPN services are still a necessity to mask users’ IP addresses and bypass restrictions.
Durov also suggests avoiding Russian apps while connected to a VPN. This advice comes amid reports that the Kremlin is managing to detect and block active VPN connections.
The fight for Telegram
After months of intermittent interruptions, the Russian authorities began to completely block the country’s most popular messaging service in March.
OONI data 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 increase from the 79% failure rate recorded just 24 hours earlier.
The increased blocking prompted an immediate response from Telegram’s engineering team, which implemented the updated anti-censorship protocol a day after the outage. In his announcement, Durov urged all Russian users to update their apps immediately to maintain a stable connection.
We have updated Telegram’s anti-censorship protocol. Users in Russia are recommended to update their apps to stay connected. Thanks to the Digital Resistance of the Russian people, Telegram usage has remained stable over the past week despite the total ban.April 11, 2026
While Moscow claims the restrictions are necessary to combat criminal activity and protect personal data, Durov maintains the ban is a purely political maneuver. He maintains that the government is trying to force citizens to use “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 obstacle 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?
Following the initial Telegram ban, government official Andrey Svintsov claimed that media regulator Roskomnadzor now has the technical ability to selectively restrict VPN traffic, suggesting that circumvention tools would soon become ineffective.
However, these claims have not yet been matched by reality. Millions of users continue to bypass restrictions by using VPN protocols that disguise encrypted traffic as standard web browsing.
In a recent update, Pavel Durov confirmed that more than 50 million Russians still use Telegram daily via VPN.
For greater precision, more than 50 million Russians send at least one message each day, with 65 million daily active users in Russia overall despite the ban. Monthly active users remain to be seen, but could easily be double that.April 4, 2026
However, the Kremlin seems determined to reverse this situation. Last week, Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadaev launched a plan to “reduce VPN usage,” introducing 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.
That’s why Durov’s advice to “stock up” on multiple services is a practical necessity. This means that if an app becomes unavailable, you can quickly move on to other alternatives.
Both Windscribe and Amenzia VPN offer free, secure apps designed specifically to defeat the Russian blockade. Proton VPN Free and PrivadoVPN Free are the top recommendations in our best free VPN guide.
