Mobile internet outages in Russia will last as long as necessary to ensure citizens’ safety, the Kremlin said on Tuesday, March 10th, after network disruptions were recorded in Moscow and other Russian cities.
Asked at a daily briefing about how long the outages will last, Kremlin representative Dmitry Peskov claimed
As long as additional measures are necessary to ensure the safety of our citizens.
Peskov also accused Ukraine of using “increasingly sophisticated attack methods” and said that “more technologically advanced countermeasures are needed” to repel them. Russian security services have frequently claimed that Ukraine was using the Telegram messaging app to recruit people or commit acts of sabotage in Russia.
In the past months Russia has imposed curbs on both Telegram and WhatsApp, owned by US social media giant Meta, citing the need to combat criminal activity. As a replacement messaging app, it has been promoting the rival Russian platform Max.
Critics of the restrictions will view them as politically motivated, although a recent serious cyberattack on the Albanian parliament shows some of the potential threats facing the cybersecurity of nation states.
