March 20, 2026

Pro-government media were twice as affected by Telegram blocking as opposition media. Views of pro-government channels fell by 23%, while opposition channels fell by only 10%

In recent days, authorities have intensified Telegram blocking. Media reported that Telegram had practically stopped working in Russia by the weekend. Since Sunday, according to Mikhail Klimarev, Telegram's availability has dropped to 80%. Novaya-Europa investigated how this affected the real activity of Russian users and found that opposition media suffered significantly less from the blocking than pro-government media. On Monday, the average number of views for pro-government channels decreased by 23% compared to the usual value for that day of the week, regional channels by 25%, and opposition channels by only 10%. We found this out by downloading the number of views for all posts from 15 pro-government, 14 opposition, and 105 regional channels and comparing them with the average number of views on the same days of the week over the last month and a half. We did not consider views for posts published after Tuesday, as the number of views for a post usually increases within 1-2 days. These estimates are only preliminary results. It has been a short time since the blocking intensified, other factors can affect views, and the effect is uneven for different media. Therefore, the impact of the blocking will only be fully understood in the future. We will continue to monitor view dynamics and provide updates. For opposition channels, in most cases, the drop is not even noticeable at the individual channel level; the decrease can be attributed to normal view fluctuations that always occur. A significant decrease can only be spoken of in the case of 2 out of 14 channels (Kholod and Zhivoy Gvozd). At the same time, the drop in views noticeably affected almost all analyzed pro-government channels. The only channel where traffic almost did not change was Readovka. Among the remaining channels, the drop is similar, usually 20-30% on Monday. The most significant drop in views was observed for propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, whose channel lost 35% of its views. Among regional channels, the decrease is less uniform: in 76 out of 105 channels, views decreased, in 28 they did not change, and in 1 they even increased. The low drop in views for independent media can be explained by the fact that a more significant portion of their audience is abroad and is not affected by the blocking, but this is only partially true. From 55% to 70% of the audience of such media is in Russia, according to internal studies by Novaya-Europa, based on its own traffic indicators and data from partner media in exile. Here, 55% is the lower estimate, without considering users who use VPNs. For pro-government and regional channels, the drop in views began earlier than for opposition channels: already on Saturday, their views fell by 11-12%, while the blocking had not yet affected the views of opposition media. On Sunday, the drop continued, reaching 17% for pro-government and 19% for regional channels, while activity in opposition channels at that moment had still practically not changed.