The Telegram platform has reportedly blocked a large number of channels and content deemed to violate Russian law, as the country's government considers a possible full ban starting April 1.
According to Andrey Svintsov, deputy chairman of the Information Policy Committee in the Russian State Duma, Telegram is now showing more active cooperation with the authorities.
In his statement to the TASS news agency, he said that over 230,000 channels and content were blocked on February 15 and over 187,000 channels on February 16, bringing the total number of groups and channels blocked since January 1, 2026, for violating current regulations, to over 7 million.
This signals that the company founded by Pavel Durov is trying to comply with the Russian government's wishes.
Previously, Russian authorities have slowed down Telegram's access speeds on the grounds of non-compliance with local laws.
There have been media reports that Telegram may be completely blocked on April 1, but so far there has been no official confirmation.
Svintsov believes Telegram still has one to two months to meet the requirements set by Roskomnadzor, Russia's communications and media regulator, and avoid a full ban.
The requirements include opening a legal entity in Russia, storing user data in the country, paying taxes, and blocking prohibited content.
According to Svintsov, the process of opening a legal entity only takes about a week, while the transfer of personal data processing takes two to three weeks.
Last year, there were reports that Telegram was planning to open an office in Russia under the landing law, but this was denied by Pavel Durov.
Meanwhile, Yulia Dolgova, President of the Russian Association of Bloggers and Agencies, said it was too early to say whether Telegram would actually be completely blocked.
She compared the situation to Meta's WhatsApp, which was blocked after its domain was removed from Russian DNS servers.
Furthermore, many users in Russia use VPNs to bypass internet restrictions.
