Telegram fines cross $400K as reports of app outages grow in Russia

A Russian court has slapped Telegram with another hefty fine over alleged failures in content moderation, ramping up pressure on the popular messenger.

The news of the financial penalty comes amid continuing outages in the country and media reports suggesting the full expulsion of the app may have already started.

Moscow court fines Telegram another 35 million rubles

The Tagansky Court in the Russian capital has fined Telegram a total of 35 million rubles (nearly $430,000) for not removing prohibited content.

The messenger has been found guilty of five counts violating Russia’s Code of Administrative Offenses, TASS and RIA Novosti revealed in separate reports.

According to the materials presented in the case, the charges were filed for failure to take down content calling for extremist activity, the news agencies noted, quoting the judge who imposed a 7-million-ruble penalty for each count.

At the end of 2025, the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation asked the nation’s media and telecom watchdog, Roskomnadzor (RKN), to request the removal of a Telegram post containing calls for extremism.

The government agency notified the messenger’s owner, demanding the same, but the latter did not remove the information within the timeframe established by Russian law, or 24 hours after receiving the official notice.

In February, the same court fined Telegram 11 million rubles (nearly $135,000) for violating the rules preventing the spreading of prohibited information.

The bulk of the fine, 7 million rubles, was again imposed for failure to remove content calling for extremist activities, but Russian authorities also accused the messaging service of keeping posts containing information about the sale of alcohol and tobacco, as well as personal data.

At the time, RIA reported that Telegram faces fines for up to 64 million rubles (over $800,000) in eight upcoming court hearings.

Fines coincide with outages and reports of full blocking

Russia has been increasing the pressure on Telegram in the past weeks and months, especially since the launch of a government-approved alternative called Max last year.

Voice calls through the platform were limited in August 2025, with Russian regulators claiming the app had become a favorite of fraudsters and extremists.

Those restrictions also affected Meta’s WhatsApp, which used to be the most popular messenger in Russia, before Telegram overtook it this year. In February, Roskomnadzor removed the WhatsApp domain from its DNS servers, effectively blocking access to it completely.

Also, last month, the RKN began slowing down traffic to Telegram. Its founder, Pavel Durov, accused Moscow of attempting “to force its citizens to switch to a state-controlled app built for surveillance and political censorship.” Russian state media recently announced that Max already has over 100 million users.

Last week, users in several countries started complaining about issues when accessing Telegram platforms and features, as reported by Cryptopolitan.

The outages in Russia continued throughout the weekend and into this week, sparking rumors that Russian authorities may be trying to fully block the app, as noted by the Moscow Times.

Citing the Сбой.рф monitoring platform, Kommersant revealed Monday that reports peaked at well over 12,000 on March 15. They approached 9,000 the following day, the website’s data shows.

Experts interviewed by the business daily explained why even VPNs are not of much help anymore, adding that the glitches are now affecting not just the mobile app but the desktop version as well.

In mid-February, the Telegram channel Baza claimed in a post that Roskomnadzor plans to start fully blocking access to the messenger on April 1. The watchdog neither confirmed nor denied media reports quoting this information.

This is not the first time Russia is taking steps to prevent its citizens from using Durov’s messaging platform. The RKN attempted to block Telegram in 2018, after the messenger refused to share encryption keys with Russian law enforcement, but lifted the restrictions in 2020.

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