Telegram may face full block similar to YouTube, says State Duma deputy

Mikhail Delyagin, deputy chairman of the State Duma's economic policy committee, indicated that Telegram might be completely blocked in Russia, potentially within a few months, using the same approach as YouTube.

Feb 18, 2026

State Duma expects that even after a full block, Telegram will still retain some users.
Source:
Maria Lents / NGS24.RU

Telegram could be fully blocked in Russia following the same pattern as YouTube, according to Mikhail Delyagin, deputy chairman of the State Duma«s economic policy committee.

«I expect Telegram to be shut down using the YouTube scheme around the elections (September 2026 — Ed.). But part of the audience will still remain, as we see with the example of Instagram (banned in Russia as an extremist organization), where about half of the audience remained,» the parliamentarian noted in the NSN press center.

A significant platform, including for business, will become the messenger Makh, which is actively developing. Delyagin emphasized that in conditions of change, entrepreneurs will have to seek new ways and adapt to changes to occupy niches that will help Russians maintain their previous standard of living.

At the same time, the deputy clarified that this is just a hypothesis, and he does not have precise information regarding the restriction of the messenger.

Roskomnadzor recently stated that they are not introducing new restrictions regarding Telegram for now. Currently, in the messenger video and voice calls are not working.

Also, Telegram is experiencing systematic failures. Today, users complained that the application has not been working for several days. We wrote more about this here.