Digital isolation: Russia completely blocks mobile internet in an entire region for the first time

In the Ulyanovsk region of Russia, residents were left without mobile internet — access to the network has been banned indefinitely, until the end of the war against Ukraine.

This is reported by The Moscow Times.

As explained by the region’s Minister of Digital Development Oleg Yagfarov, the decision was made not by local authorities, but by the federal center. Moscow justifies the step by “ensuring state security,” and the restrictions, he said, can only be lifted by a separate order from the Kremlin.

Regional officials clarified that this is not about short-term technical work, but about the permanent blocking of mobile Internet within the expanded “security zone” around strategic facilities.

Communication problems have been ongoing in the region for over a week, affecting residential areas, hospitals, schools, government agencies, and private company offices.

Local residents were urged to use Wi-Fi in public places and a “white list” of permitted online services, which includes “State Services”, “Yandex”, “VKontakte” and the payment system “Mir”.

According to the monitoring project “In Contact”, similar Internet shutdowns in various forms have already been recorded in more than 50 regions of Russia, however, an indefinite blocking, as in the case of the Ulyanovsk region, has been officially introduced for the first time.

Recall thatmobile operators in Russia and in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine may be required to disconnect users from mobile and Internet communications at the request of the FSB.

As previously reported, temporarily occupied Crimea has been experiencing serious communication problems for four days in a row, adding to an already acute fuel shortage . Local residents have reported unstable mobile internet and frequent crashes of the MAX app.

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