As of summer 2025, mobile Internet shutdowns have become a routine part of life in Russia. Users are also reporting more frequent disruptions to home Internet and even cell service. The number and scale of these shutdowns began to grow in the spring but escalated sharply in June, after Ukraine launched Operation Spiderweb — an attack in which remotely operated drones, guided via mobile networks, struck military air bases deep inside Russian territory.

Data from the technical support project Na Svyazi, which collects and verifies user complaints, confirms that by late June, more than half of Russia’s regions were regularly affected by these restrictions. Mobile Internet is now being cut even in areas thousands of kilometers from the front line. In June alone, the number of local shutdowns surpassed 650 — and in July, the authorities have not only continued the practice but expanded it.

Meduza reviewed Na Svyazi’s data to track the growing scale of shutdowns and identify which parts of Russia are being hit hardest.

What to know about the chart below

The chart below shows the total number of Russian regions affected by confirmed shutdowns on each day in May and June. The data clearly shows a sharp increase beginning in mid-June. By the end of the month, users were increasingly reporting not only mobile Internet outages but also problems with voice calls and fixed-line Internet access.

Na Svyazi has developed its own methodology for tracking shutdowns, which includes monitoring official announcements from government agencies and analyzing user complaints. Each complaint, according to the project, undergoes a technical verification process to confirm that the disruption can be measured objectively — and that it affects more than one mobile operator. This step helps filter out cases that might otherwise appear to be government-imposed shutdowns but are actually provider-specific service failures.

The data collected by Na Svyazi isn’t exhaustive, but if you exclude smaller regions, it offers a meaningful picture of the disruptions’ scale. Over the course of two months, confirmed outages were recorded in every region except five sparsely populated ones — places where either the authorities truly imposed no restrictions or, more likely, there simply weren’t enough users to report them.

Graph showing the increase in shutdowns

What to know about the map below

Judging by the map Meduza compiled using data from Na Svyazi, the latest Internet shutdowns are affecting regions across Russia regardless of whether they have any proximity to actual combat. The region experiencing the most shutdowns is Omsk, which has faced serious disruptions since June 6 — nearly the entire month — despite the regional capital being more than 2,500 kilometers (about 1,550 miles) from the Ukrainian border. Outages have also been reported in Krasnoyarsk Krai, the Sakha Republic, and even in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. In regions near the border, meanwhile, Internet disruptions have occurred far less frequently in the Belgorod and Oryol regions than in the neighboring Bryansk and Kursk regions.

In the Irkutsk region’s Usolsky District, home to one of the air bases targeted in Operation Spiderweb, residents have been struggling without reliable Internet or phone service since the June 1 strike, People of Baikal reported. “To call relatives or an ambulance, we have to walk through the streets just to find a spot where the phone stops crackling,” one woman wrote in a local Telegram group. Pavel Glushchenko, who lives in a village near the base, told the outlet that he has to walk to the river to take calls, since there’s no signal in the village itself. Even card payments no longer work: locals must take a bus to the nearest town with an ATM just to withdraw cash for groceries.

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Overall, however, the seemingly random nature of the shutdowns makes it difficult to identify consistent patterns or a clear logic behind the authorities’ decisions. Some regions that come under frequent drone attacks are clearly of strategic interest to Ukraine. These include Russian defense production hubs, such as the Nizhny Novgorod and Tula regions and the Udmurt Republic; areas with military aviation and other armed forces infrastructure, such as the Murmansk, Saratov, Pskov, and Rostov regions; and regions with energy infrastructure, such as Omsk and Astrakhan.

But even grouping the affected areas this way doesn’t fully explain the frequency of the shutdowns. Some regions that would logically be high-priority targets for Ukrainian strikes have experienced relatively few attacks, while others that fall outside all of these categories have been hit much more frequently.

The regions that experienced the most frequent mobile Internet shutdowns — those with at least 20 days of confirmed local outages in May and June combined — are Nizhny Novgorod (21 days), Saratov, Tula, Omsk, and Rostov (each with 20 days).

Map showing regions affected by shutdowns

Operation spiderweb

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