Telegram founder Pavel Durov says Russia’s crackdown on VPNs caused a payment-system failure that disrupted shopping and transit for many people.
Durov blamed Russia’s efforts to block virtual private networks and called it part of a bigger struggle over online access and censorship.
Durov ties the outage to Russia’s anti-VPN push
Durov posted on Telegram that the payment outage was connected to the government’s attack on VPN access.
Reuters said he addressed Russians as my Russian brothers and sisters and said, the entire nation is now mobilized to bypass these absurd restrictions.
Durov described the payment problem as a result of the government’s wider effort to block tools that help people get around restrictions and to tighten control over online traffic.
This claim is important because Russia has been increasing restrictions on communication channels it says are security risks.
Russian authorities have often blocked mobile internet, given themselves broad powers to shut down mass communications, and jammed messenger services and VPNs. Diplomats have called this a “great crackdown.”
The failure spilled into daily life
Friday’s payment problem caused clear disruptions in public life.
In Moscow, the metro let passengers through without payment, and a regional zoo asked visitors to pay with cash after electronic systems stopped working. These examples show the incident affected everyday transactions, making it hard for people to ignore.
Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, admitted there was a technical issue but did not give more details. Some Russian media later deleted stories that connected the outage to government efforts to block certain sites or VPNs.
As a result, the public now faces two explanations: one is an unexplained technical failure, and the other is Durov’s claim that the government’s digital crackdown caused the problem.
Telegram remains at the center of a deeper standoff
This latest dispute is part of a bigger picture.
U.S. News shared that Russian officials say their restrictions on VPNs and messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram are needed for security, especially as Moscow faces deadly attacks inside Russia from Ukraine and what officials call sabotage attempts supported by Western intelligence services.
Telegram is still a politically sensitive platform in Russia.
Russia has already slowed down Telegram, which has over 1 billion active users, and has investigated Durov in a criminal case with terrorism-related accusations.
Russian officials have also claimed that Ukrainian and NATO intelligence agencies accessed Telegram, and said Russian soldiers died because of it.
Telegram has denied these claims and Moscow is trying to move Russians to MAX, a state-backed messenger that schools and universities are now told to use. This push for the new app has upset some Russians.
A technical outage with political overtones
What makes this episode notable is that a payment-system problem has now become part of Russia’s larger digital-control battle.
Even without a full technical explanation from Russian authorities, Durov’s claim turns the incident into more than a service disruption. It becomes evidence, for Telegram and its supporters, that broad internet restrictions can break everyday systems in unpredictable ways.
In that sense, the outage was not just about payments.
It was about who controls access, which tools Russians are allowed to use online, and how far the state is willing to go in enforcing those boundaries.
