Authorities in Russia began hampering access to WhatsApp in the south of the country out of concern that protest actions were being planned there, news outlets in the country reported.
Russian state news agency Tass said that authorities were "slowing down" (or "jamming") the use of the app in Dagestan because the social media giant Meta, which owns the messaging service and is recognized in Russia as "extremist," is "ignoring requirements to stop calls to participate in extremist actions."
WhatsApp users in the mainly Muslim Caucasus region have said that they have experienced long delays in sending messages since 1 p.m. on Sunday.
Users in other regions of southern Russia, such as Krasnodar and Rostov, also reported problems with the messaging network, according to the independent Russian language outlet Sirena. The online outlet posted screenshots of WhatsApp users complaining about the outages on Telegram.
According to the website "Sboi.rf," users from the neighboring republic of Chechnya also reported WhatsApp problems, and there were more than 8,000 complaints about the service from across the country.
The Russian business newspaper Kommersant reported that no messages could be sent on WhatsApp without a virtual private network, and even when a VPN was enabled, it had to be reconnected every 10 minutes.
Newsweek reached out to Meta for comment on Monday.
The state media claims linking the messenger's outage to preventing "extremist actions" comes two weeks after at least 26 people were killed in Dagestan following coordinated attacks on two synagogues, two Eastern Orthodox churches, and a traffic police post in the coastal city of Derbent and regional capital Makhachkala.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said Wilayat Kavkaz, the Islamic State's Northern Caucasus branch, was probably behind the attacks. The attacks came only three months after gunmen stormed the Crocus concert hall in Russia's capital, Moscow, in a terrorist operation claimed by ISIS-K in which at least 144 people were killed.
Russian authorities were quick to link the incidents to the West as well as Ukraine. Russia has been at war with Ukraine since President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of the neighboring country in February 2022.
Amid fears about growing instability in the North Caucasus, the exiled Chief Rabbi of Moscow, Pinchas Goldschmidt, told Newsweek last month that by "crushing dissent" among the opposition, the Kremlin is "not really focusing on the real threat coming from real terrorist groups like ISIS."
Update 07/08/24, 10:02 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Brendan Cole is a Newsweek Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. His focus is Russia and Ukraine, in particular ... Read more
