Hello and welcome to Regions Calling, The Moscow Times’ weekly newsletter on developments beyond the Russian capital.

Though Russia has long flirted with the idea of a “sovereign internet,” when our editorial team named this newsletter “Regions Calling,” we did not expect events to take the turn that they did. Indeed, for over a week now, calling has become the one thing that people across Russia’s regions are struggling to do after authorities restricted voice and video calls on WhatsApp and Telegram.

In this week’s edition, we will dive into how the throttling of Russia’s two most popular messaging apps is transforming the lives of ordinary citizens and the vast diaspora.

But first, here’s a look at what else happened in the regions:

The Headlines

The widely unpopular Kremlin-initiated local governance reform is again in the headlines after courts in the republic of Altai and the Krasnoyarsk region rejected a lawsuit challenging it.

Backed by the two regions’ Kremlin-appointed heads, the reform is widely seen as being detrimental to the livelihoods of the many village residents, who will no longer be able to elect their own representatives and will have fewer opportunities to defend their interests within the government system.

A political drama is unfolding in the republic of Sakha (Yakutia) after the head of Russia’s center-right New People party Alexei Nechayev called for the expulsion of Sakha parliament member Alexander Ivanov from the party.

The move comes after several pro-government Telegram channels and news agencies accused Ivanov of harboring Sakha nationalist, separatist and even pan-Turkist sentiments, citing his interview with Turkish blogger Cem Kiran published last year. Ivanov denied all accusations, arguing that the citations used in the exposés were taken out of context.

In the republic of Tyva, a local doctor is sounding the alarm about a sudden spike in coronavirus cases among children and the elderly.

“We have reopened wards for treating coronavirus patients and are operating in a state of high preparedness,” Anna Saryglar, the head of a hospital in the regional capital Kyzyl, said in a post on VKontakte.

And in the republic of Bashkortostan, the Russian rights group Memorial has designated 46 defendants in the Baymak case as political prisoners.

Russia’s oldest rights group called the repressions stemming from last year’s Baymak protests “unprecedented even for Putin’s Russia.”

The Spotlight

‘Losing a Lifeline’: Russians Adapt to Restrictions On Global Messaging Apps

About a dozen people gathered in central Novosibirsk, Siberia’s largest city, on Tuesday for a rare authorized protest.

“For mobile service with no restrictions,” read the banner carried by the demonstrators alongside flags of the Soviet Union and Russia’s Communist Party, which organized the event. Only a few young faces could be spotted among the demonstrators, with pensioners making up the majority.

The small rally came nearly two weeks after Russians first reported issues with placing voice and video calls through WhatsApp and Telegram.

Following days of uncertainty, state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor finally confirmed last Wednesday that it was throttling calls placed through the apps to “counter criminal activity.”

The Moscow Times spoke to dozens of users from across Russia as well as some in the diaspora who have for years relied on these apps to stay in touch with friends and relatives inside the country.

All of them asked to be cited anonymously for safety reasons.

One thing our small survey revealed is that the restrictions are far from being foolproof — at least for the time being — and can vary based on mobile carrier and geographical location within the country and even within the same region.

“I am based in St. Petersburg and my parents are in the republic of Sakha. I am using VPN to call them on WhatsApp, but for them, the app works fine without a VPN,” one young woman said.

“It seems like communication restrictions are more relaxed in the republic. In St. Petersburg, I can’t even connect to a VPN when on mobile internet, but in Sakha, it is very much possible,” she added.

Although its parent company Meta was banned as “extremist” in 2022, WhatsApp remains unrivaled in its position as Russia’s most popular messaging app.

The app was used by more than 97 million people over the age of 12 in Russia in July, according to statistics maintained by independent Russian media monitor Mediascope. Telegram came in close second with just over 90 million users, while homegrown VK Messenger had just over 16 million users.

Some Russians told The Moscow Times they had no plans to abandon their favorite messengers and would continue relying on VPN services to place calls, especially on Telegram. Yet it is unclear how much longer this workaround will be feasible.

“Popular VPNs produce some distinguishable fingerprints…Filtering tools placed in the internet backbone infrastructure can be used to identify and block such traffic that matches the signature of a known VPN service,” said Steve Sacks, a digital risks expert based in Washington, DC.

“While this may be harder to enforce with less mainstream VPN providers, Russian government agencies would likely continue to update the fingerprint matching filter rules regularly to try to stay ahead of illicit VPN users,” Sacks told The Moscow Times, noting that Russian authorities can also add more VPN providers to its growing list of outlawed applications.