Author: Ivan Preobrazhensky
Moscow authorities informed citizens about the largest attack by Ukrainian drones since the beginning of 2026 - almost 200 were shot down in two days, but evidence was never presented. This happened after the mobile Internet (and in some places also the cable Internet) practically stopped working in the city. The suspension of connections is explained by security considerations - for example, to protect against Ukrainian drones. But the combination of the record number of attacks that the authorities are talking about and the largest Internet shutdowns clearly shows that Internet censorship has nothing to do with air defense.
You can't even catch a taxi
From messages on social networks, it became clear to me that if a criminal case had not been opened against me, I could have flown to Moscow and earned quite a bit as a taxi driver, which I used to be. With the difference that now I would have only minimal competition due to the lack of the Internet.
Modern taxi drivers in general cannot move around the city without the “Yandex“ application and without navigation. Guests of the capital also often do not know how to get from point A to point B - even by public transport, and now there is nowhere to check. And hailing a taxi straight from the street without the appropriate app is almost impossible.
Blocking the Internet is poison for all businesses
In fact, shutting down the mobile Internet, supplemented by slowing down or blocking the most popular messengers, is killing not only the taxi business, but many others. These include all sorts of private and state offices that book their patients online, as well as ground public transport, whose control systems need the Internet, in addition to courier services and delivery systems from stores or restaurants, flower orders, emergency removals, etc. And all businesses that invest in online advertising, promoters and marketing managers on social networks have practically lost touch with their customers.
The authorities in vain think that this is just “foam“ of “real business“ in Russia – that is, oil and gas extraction, metalworking or even baking bread. Firstly, these businesses are no longer possible without the Internet. Secondly, Moscow is a city of about 15 million inhabitants, in which there has long been no industry left, and people need work – there is no way that petrochemicals can feed everyone. Moreover, it was the Internet that helped create a functioning system that provides work for everyone.
Criticism even from pro-government bloggers
These are the blood vessels of the modern economy, which, for example, helped it withstand the pressure of large-scale sanctions after the start of the aggression against Ukraine. The authorities should value the Internet, because their stability depends on it, and now even pro-government bloggers are writing critically about its shutdown.
Vladimir Putin, on the one hand, claims to be concerned about the development of artificial intelligence and considers it a weapon, but on the other - and to this day continues to receive all the data "in papyri". For him and his peers, the Internet is still a harmful channel for information influence invented by the CIA, which can be easily clogged, just as in the days of their youth in the USSR they silenced Deutsche Welle, and in more recent times they blocked the media's websites. In practice, all their efforts resemble, figuratively speaking, an attempt to turn off the sewers - However, everyone everywhere suffers from this.
Few and fewer citizens believe the authorities' arguments
At least the sites and services allowed on the official list, which should have been accessible on the Internet even during the restrictions, should be functioning, but they are not working either. Therefore, with every turn of the wrench of Roskomnadzor (the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technologies and Mass Communications - ed.), which tightens the nuts of Internet censorship, fewer and fewer people believe the authorities that the network is blocked for the security of citizens.
For example, it was promised that the messenger Mach, which is supposed to replace Telegram, will protect against fraud and scammers. But criminals have already adapted and are working no less effectively there. By the way, there is a hypothesis that some of them are in government service and their task is to create panic and chaos, with which to argue for more and more bans.
The example of Moscow is particularly striking - mobile internet in the capital has been practically non-functional for several days now. Fixed internet is also unstable. Mobile connections are under control, and the work of GPS tracking devices is limited, since the internet has not been functioning normally in the city center for a long time.
Censorship is also eating away at the Russian economy
At the same time, Ukrainian drones, the protection from which the authorities explain the restrictions on mobile internet, continue to fly towards Moscow in record numbers, and Mayor Sergei Sobyanin personally reports how many of them were valiantly shot down. It turns out that in this whole situation, only air defense in the vicinity of Moscow is functioning for now. Well, and censorship, which is eating away at the technological skeleton of the Russian economy from the inside - just like bone cancer.