The Russian government is in an ongoing battle with encrypted messaging service Telegram, and it's losing.
Back in March, Telegram was given 15 days to share its encryption keys with the Russian government, a demand which was clearly never going to be met by the service. Then in mid-April, a Moscow court ruled in favor of the Russian state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor in its bid to block the messaging app after its refusal to comply.
What followed was an attempted ban and the inevitable surge in VPN use as Russians kept using the service. There are thought to be 15 million registered users of Telegram in Russia, with 10 million using it daily.
A demand that was refused and an attempted block which failed is quite embarrassing for the government, so more extreme measures are being taken. As TechSpot reports, 20 million IP addresses and over 50 VPN and web anonymizer services have now been blocked, which had the side effect of rendering other online services (game servers, banking, cryptocurrency sites) unusable. And yet, Telegram continues to be available and used.
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Roskomnadzor won't specify which services it is actively blocking, but the disruption is thought to be widespread. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft all have servers that can't currently be accessed in Russia. Apple and Google have also been asked to remove the Telegram app from their online stores. It's unclear if this will happen.
What else can Russia do? Not much as far as I can tell. Blocking services that allow anonymous access may cause a headache for Telegram and its users, but it's a temporary one as new access routes are found quickly. This is a cat and mouse game, and one that looks set to continue for quite some time.