Dear reader,
You have the opportunity to read this newsletter, as well as the freedom to read any news in Telegram or use it to communicate with friends. But in the North Caucasus, the use of the social media messenger Telegram is already a luxury.
Since November, residents of Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Daghestan have reported problems accessing the messaging app. The authorities, without blinking an eye, replied that any issues were the work of ‘foreign agents’, accusing such ‘agents’ of making up all sorts of fairy tales.
But North Caucasians are not used to just sitting back and losing access to popular apps — while Instagram may have become less popular after it was blocked due to the fact that finding a good and inexpensive VPN was not the easiest task, it has not disappeared. Whether Telegram was blocked or not, North Caucasians have always found ways to bypass all the obstacles of the Russian security forces.
But this week, something new happened.
First, Daghestan’s Ministry of Digital Development suddenly acknowledged that Telegram had been blocked, saying that it had been done solely for security purposes. Yet just a few days later, they appealed to the federal authorities with a request to lift the restrictions, alleging that the block hinders the development of tourism in the region, and that, in general, Daghestan is one of the safest regions in Russia.
Shortly after, Chechen Press Minister Akhmed Dudaev also expressed a similar opinion.
In contrast, Ingushetia has continued to remain silent.
The federal authorities did not react to the statements of the North Caucasian republics. Nor did Telegram itself, which did not comment on the original news the app was blocked in last autumn either.
But bans exist to be broken, and it is not only the ordinary residents of North Caucasian republics that use VPNs to access their favourite messengers.
The Head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, and Apti Alaudinov, the commander of the Akhmat special forces, have continuously maintained uninterrupted channels on Telegram. Even Chechen Press Minister Dudaev demanded that Telegram be unblocked, writing a post about it in Telegram itself!
A similar situation has developed in Daghestan and Ingushetia, where even the usually law-abiding republic heads continue to run their channels as if nothing has happened.
Even Instagram, which belongs to the ‘extremist’ company Meta, has never caused much trouble for top officials either. The entire Kadyrov family regularly posts stories and rants about their everyday lives.
Some have theorised that the blocking of Telegram was part of an experiment to introduce an internet in Russia that is separate from the rest of the world, like the one in North Korea. Perhaps the experiment didn’t pay off and there is no need to ‘hide’ it anymore.
Telegram was the last island of freedom. YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram — all of these social networks have been controlled by the FSB, something everyone has gotten used to over the last three years of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
As for why they are blocking all these resources? Well, the answer is obvious: to prevent people from being able to choose for themselves the sources of information they want. On the ‘right’ resources, the authorities only publish ‘good’ information about their achievements, about the harvest, about cow milk yields. What losses have occurred during the war, what crimes have been committed by the war veterans returning from the front — this is what the authorities want to hide.
Either way, we will take advantage of our still existing freedom of speech. Read news and articles on our website as long as your authorities allow access to it!
