March 15, 2026

Moscow Doesn't Believe in Internet


Moscow Doesn't Believe in Internet
Wait for it... Uladzimir Zuyeu

 

Over the last two weeks, Moscow has been suffering from widespread and intermittent internet outages. Citizens have been coping by returning to technology from the 1990s.

According to The Moscow Times, Russian internet retailer Wildberries has seen a 73% increase in orders of old-school pagers this month. In addition, orders of walkie-talkies and landline phones are up 27% and 25%, respectively. For many Muscovites, such backwards tech has been the only way to keep their business running in a bustling modern city.

In addition, Russian state news outlet Izvestia reported a 50% increase in bookstore sales citywide. A goodly portion of these sales are driven by products whose functions that were until recently done by mobile phones connected to cellular data: not only physical books, but atlases and city guides. Paper map sales alone have tripled.

The outages themselves are something of a mystery. Per the Kremlin, they are the result of testing of a "whitelist" that would severely limit access for Russian internet users, and so the outages will remain in place until the tests are complete. However, authorities had previously claimed the outages were an effort to thwart Ukrainian drone attacks.

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