Russian authorities have imposed rolling mobile internet blackouts in Moscow since March 5, while allowing access only to a limited set of approved services through a whitelist system, the Financial Times reported on March 14. The Kremlin acknowledged the outages and said it would keep the measures in place for security reasons.

Russian authorities have already used similar disruptions in other Russian regions before bringing them to the capital, where mobile traffic has fallen about 20% since February. Businesses report major operational disruptions tied to cloud services, logistics and payment systems, with estimates placing losses at roughly 1 billion to 2 billion rubles ($12.5 million to $25 million) per day. Russia has also tightened restrictions on Telegram and pushed domestic alternatives as part of a broader sovereign internet strategy. Residents have reportedly turned to cash, landlines, pagers and printed maps as outages disrupt the city's digital infrastructure.