Russia’s widening internet crackdown is no longer just a censorship story. It is becoming a business story too, especially for smaller companies that rely on messaging apps, websites and mobile access to reach customers.
Restrictions on Telegram, curbs on VPNs and security-linked mobile internet shutdowns have affected much of Russia this year, creating what it called a particular “headache” for web-dependent small businesses. The outages are unpredictable and are putting billions of dollars in digital sales at risk.
The human cost of that pressure is now showing more openly. Journalist Steve Rosenberg described people queuing outside the presidential administration office near the Kremlin to submit petitions asking President Vladimir Putin to end the internet crackdown.
One of them, Yulia, admitted she was “very scared” and “shaking” as security officers filmed the petitioners from across the street.
Entrepreneurs say outages are cutting into revenue
The people speaking out are not only activists. They are also business owners.
BBC said Yulia, who runs a catering company, described how attempts to censor the internet had already disrupted her website and sales. “We couldn’t generate revenue,” she said, adding that her business exists “entirely on the internet” and would not survive in its current form without stable access.
That complaint lines up with Reuters’ reporting from Moscow, where dogwear entrepreneur Natalia Kukovinets said Telegram had become “basically everything” for communicating with customers after Instagram was restricted in 2022 and WhatsApp in February.
Reuters said Kukovinets now struggles because Telegram often does not work properly without a VPN and notifications often do not come through.
The scale of the dependence is significant. Citing Interfax, it said around 2.9 million small-to-medium-sized firms and 14.1 million self-employed individuals use messaging apps for business.
That helps explain why what the Kremlin frames as internet control is being felt by entrepreneurs as a direct hit to revenue and customer communication.
Restaurants and property firms are also feeling the squeeze
The damage is not limited to online-first brands. A glitch linked to restrictions left Moscow restaurant Skrepka unable to process online orders for its iced Easter cakes in April.
Manager Daria Teterina said, “Telegram was down, so the customers started shouting,” calling it a “reputational loss.”
Anton Belykh, who runs Moscow-based property firm DNA Realty, saying delayed messages and communication problems mean that “both we and our clients end up losing money.”
The economic exposure is large even if the government has not published a full cost estimate. There is no official data on the overall impact, but cited the Association of Internet Trade Companies, which said goods and services sold through digital platforms totaled 11.5 trillion roubles, or about $153.74 billion, in 2025.
Moscow says security comes first
The Kremlin insists the restrictions are about safety, not control for its own sake.
BBC said Putin acknowledged the disruption and described it as operational work to prevent terrorist attacks, though he also said he had instructed officials to allow the “uninterrupted operation” of essential internet services.
Russian officials have also argued that mobile internet blackouts can disorient Ukrainian attack drones, that such attacks have continued in areas where the internet has been switched off.
The Kremlin has rejected comparisons to Soviet-style information control and says the measures are temporary.
But it also said the government would not compensate businesses for losses from days-long mobile internet shutdowns in Moscow, where coverage was jammed for nearly three weeks in March.
The authorities are promoting the state-backed messenger MAX, though many entrepreneurs remain reluctant to switch.
Belykh shared that only 2% to 3% of his clients used MAX, while Kukovinets said her business would stay on Telegram when possible.
A pressure point for the Kremlin
The bigger problem for the Kremlin is that this is becoming harder to dismiss as a niche complaint.
More than two-thirds of Russians said the restrictions had made life more difficult, citing a March survey by the independent pollster Levada.
For a government that has spent years tightening control over digital life, that kind of public frustration matters.
What began as an attempt to build a more “sovereign internet” is increasingly colliding with the day-to-day reality of how Russians work, sell and stay in touch.
