Russia faces a massive banking failure in an attempt to fully block Telegram and limit VPN use; Pavel Durov reveals that 50M+ Russians still use Telegram via VPNs amid the ban
For a long time now, we have been hearing about the restrictions imposed on Telegram, WhatsApp and VPNs in Russia by the government, and they are continuing to do so.
Recently, several major banks in Russia, including Sber, VTB, Alfa-Bank, T-Bank and the Central Bank’s faster payment system, reported a major outage due to which customers were unable to make payments, transfer money or withdraw cash. And cash briefly became the only payment method nationwide.
According to The Moscow Times, the outages spiked across Russia’s banking sector for roughly 2 hours on Friday (2nd April). As per the Central Bank’s National Payment Card System, the outage was caused by a technical failure at one of the banks, while its own systems were operating normally.
As per reports, the banking outage came as Russian authorities prepared to fully block Telegram in the country in early April and expand measures aimed at limiting VPN use.
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has reacted to this outage and mentioned in his X post that, amid the ban in Russia, 50M+ Russians still use it daily via VPNs. He also stated that the Russian government has spent years trying to ban VPNs, too and now their blocking attempts triggered a massive banking failure.
Further, he also mentioned in the comment section of his post that over 50M Russians send at least one message every day, with 65M daily active users in Russia overall despite the ban.
