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Since early May, Russians have reported numerous instances of mobile internet disruption. Regional authorities attribute the shutdowns to security concerns — specifically, to measures taken in an effort to disrupt Ukrainian drone attacks. However, outages have also occurred in areas where no such strikes took place — at least, none that were officially reported.
Between May 1 and June 18, Russia experienced at least 263 confirmed drone attacks. According to an analysis conducted by The Insider in collaboration with the Russian internet monitoring project Na Svyazi (“In Touch”), the same period saw at least 200 mobile internet shutdowns. The number of shutdowns has been steadily increasing: while there were 39 incidents throughout May, June alone accounted for 161 cases in just 18 days. Since June 9, the shutdowns have occurred on a daily basis.
The use of mobile internet shutdowns as a countermeasure against drones was confirmed to The Insider by a regional official from the Central Federal District, who wished to remain anonymous.
“It really is a method of defense — and a fairly effective one. But the internet is shut down only for the time of the attack. Normally, the internet works fine even when drones are flying. The only thing that stops working is geolocation on all navigation apps.”
Sergei Tovkach, CEO of the drone development company Avianovatsii, also described the mobile internet shutdowns as being justified. He told The Insider:
“Drones have stopped hitting their targets. We should have done this a year ago, when the first UAVs with internet-based control started arriving. Ukraine has no other guidance methods and no communication infrastructure of its own. The drones we captured have either Chinese or NATO equipment. It is technically possible to configure the shutdown in a way that only drones lose mobile internet access.”
Ukrainian aviation expert Anatolii Khrapchynskyi, on the other hand, questioned the effectiveness of the shutdowns:
“I wouldn’t say that Ukrainian drones rely on mobile internet — at least not when it comes to long-range airstrikes. And if Russian experts insist that shutting down mobile networks helps, let them. It only plays into the hands of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, military reports have yet to show any significant decrease in the number of successful Ukrainian drone attacks. According to estimates by the Ukrainian OSINT project Oko Hora ✙ News and Analytics, 21 successful drone strikes (“hits”) were recorded in May, including on three airfields and 13 defense industry facilities. For comparison, there were 11 such hits in April and 23 in March.
On June 1, Ukrainian forces launched Operation Spiderweb, an unprecedented assault involving over a hundred Ukrainian FPV drones targeting Russian airbases — including those used by strategic aviation. According to OSINT analysts, more than 20 aircraft were hit. Military reports from the first 18 days of June indicate that Ukrainian drones carried out at least 15 successful strikes on Russian territory, primarily targeting industrial facilities.
Shutdowns with no drones in sight
A correlation between mobile internet shutdowns and drone strikes during the observed period (May 1–June 18) was found in less than half of the cases: of the 200 shutdowns, only 78 coincided with attacks. In the remaining instances, either the internet continued to function during the strikes, or it was shut down despite the apparent absence of danger. At least 26 regions experienced mobile internet disruptions, even though there was no drone activity reported in those locations during that period.
Complaints have come from the Nizhny Novgorod and Sverdlovsk regions, as well as Adygea, that users have been unable to access certain foreign websites, while Russian sites loaded without issue. Analysts from Na Svyazi explain that such phenomena are connected with so-called “gray lists” — websites that are not officially blocked but are still inaccessible in certain regions of Russia. As of June 26, such restrictions have been recorded in 33 regions.
A Dagestani official who wished to remain anonymous told The Insider that the authorities may be using the fight against drones as a pretext to restrict Russians' internet access, especially when it comes to messaging apps.
“Let’s consider the timeline of Russia's creeping blockade of Telegram. When in August 2024 Pavel Durov, the company’s founder, was detained in France, several major pro-government Russian Telegram channels expressed concern that Telegram ‘is no longer a safe platform,’ implying, of course, the vulnerability of the Russian segment to Western intelligence services.
In October of the same year, after Ramzan Kadyrov announced a vendetta against several Russian politicians, Telegram was jammed across the entire south of Russia. Later, the jam was partially lifted, leaving the messenger blocked in three republics of the North Caucasus: Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Chechnya. In the spring of 2024, Russia trialed an internet lockdown, blocking access to multiple foreign services and disabling several VPN tools.
Recently, we have seen frequent Telegram jams in southwestern Russia, under the official pretext of disrupting Ukrainian drones. Meanwhile, the State Duma passed a bill on a Russian messenger app that is intended to replace WhatsApp and Telegram. This brings us back to where I started: the Russian side has doubts about Telegram’s security against foreign intelligence, even though an investigation by IStories claimed that Russian security services have long established a working relationship with Telegram’s administration.
In my understanding, the fight against enemy drones could serve as a convenient pretext for gradually imposing a Russian messenger app on citizens. The first signal will be the migration of official Russian government channels from Telegram to VK-Max.”
How the mobile internet is jammed
Mobile network, mobile internet, and geolocation (GPS/GLONASS) outages have long been observed in frontline regions due to air defense measures. However, since May, similar shutdowns have started occurring in regions far from the front line. These shutdowns have been implemented both through Traffic Filtering Equipment (TFE) on backbone connections to the external internet and at the level of mobile operators' infrastructure by throttling mobile data speeds. Public notifications about shutdowns cited the threat of drone strikes as the reason.
In June, shutdowns not only became more frequent but also expanded geographically. At the same time, the outages increasingly resembled preventive maintenance work on network infrastructure, as they did not occur simultaneously across all operators in a region but rather in stages. Connectivity was disabled sequentially over the course of several days. Notably, in June, geolocation services were rarely affected, with shutdowns impacting only mobile data transmission.
A significant reduction in data speeds rather than a complete shutdown may indicate the modernization or testing of internet traffic control equipment. Also of note is the fact that civilian drones use frequencies from 2 to 5 GHz to communicate with their operators, while mobile data transmission operates in ranges between 800 and 2600 MHz.
There is further evidence of the Russian government tightening control over internet access. For instance, the communications oversight agency Roskomnadzor plans to require telecom operators to provide comprehensive technical data about their networks: which devices handle the traffic, how it is routed, and who has access to it. The Ministry of Digital Development has drafted amendments to the Law on Communications that would prohibit users from changing the identification numbers of their mobile devices — IMEIs.