Main points
- Russia has blocked access to WhatsApp, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and several international media outlets such as BBC News and Deutsche Welle by removing their IP addresses from the National Domain Name System (NDNS).
- Users who try to access these sites receive a technical error message indicating that the domain records have been removed, rather than the usual ISP-level blocking.
What happened to social networks and news sites in Russia / Collage of Channel 24
Russia continues to block social networks for its citizens. After Telegram, another popular messenger, WhatsApp, became inaccessible. YouTube followed, and a few hours later, other social networks and even some news outlets were added to the list.
What is known about the blocking of social networks for Russians?
As it became known on February 11, the WhatsApp domain disappeared from the records of the Russian National System of Domain Names (NSDN) – the infrastructure created under the law on the “sovereign Runet”. For users, this means that devices in Russia have stopped receiving the messenger's IP addresses. Thus, access to WhatsApp is now possible only via VPN. This is reported by users on the Russian platform Habr and the propaganda publication Kommersant.
The messenger has also become physically inaccessible to users whose providers use state DNS servers, as the router will now be unable to link the site's address to its IP. Therefore, Russians will also need a VPN to use the application.
Russian journalists note that only the domains that used whatsapp.com and web.whatsapp.com disappeared from the NSDI, however, the technical domain for the messenger whatsapp.net and the domain for quick links wa.me are still on the NSDI list.
What else has disappeared from the list of the Russian NSDI?
Later, the Russian authorities moved on to blocking other services. The IP addresses of a number of large international resources disappeared from the NSDI service records. Among them are Facebook, Instagram, as well as the websites of a number of media outlets: BBC News, Deutsche Welle, Radio Liberty, Current Time, and others. Some of these publications are included in the Russian register of “foreign agents.”
The Russian project “Na Svyazi” reported that it checked all these sites – 13 names in total – and confirmed their removal from the National Domain Name System. There is also no access to the Tor browser.
Regulators have begun to actively apply a new method of restrictions: DNS record removal or DNS tampering. This has happened before, but in a few cases, for example, when blocking Discord and Signal in 2024. We only recorded a mass removal today,
– writes “On contact”.
When users try to go to the corresponding addresses, they see the technical message “DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN”. This means that the system cannot find the domain – in fact, it reports that such a site does not exist. That is, this is not about the usual blocking at the provider level or slowing down traffic, but about the removal of the record from the state DNS infrastructure.
Previously, Russian authorities claimed that YouTube was only being “slowed down” and not blocked completely. Now the mechanism seems much stricter. The removal of domain records means that access to the services is impossible without using alternative DNS servers or a VPN.
It is noted that currently only the National Registry of Domain Names has removed information about the IP addresses of some resources from its records, while other DNS providers are working properly and continue to process requests correctly.
Interestingly, the Russian authorities previously claimed that they were not completely blocking the work of, for example, YouTube, but only slowing it down. Experts call these blockings an actual step towards a full-fledged “sovereign Internet”. This involves the formation of an isolated network infrastructure that works according to its own rules and can function separately from the global DNS space. In such a model, the state controls not only traffic, but also the domain name system itself.
What is the situation with Telegram in the aggressor country?
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Telegram users in Russia experienced technical issues on February 9 and 10. The main difficulties were observed in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, as well as in Magadan and the region, and on Sakhalin.
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Against this background, Russian media reported on possible restrictions on the messenger's operation by the state. RosZMI, in turn, wrote that Roskomnadzor had begun the procedure of partially slowing down Telegram.
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At the same time, the Russian military appealed to Roskomnadzor with a request not to block Telegram. The occupiers called the messenger their “only communication channel.”