Moscow residents have been forced to resort to walkie talkies, pagers and paper maps for communication and navigation after more than a week of blackouts in the Russian capital.
Wi-Fi and mobile internet disruptions have affected central Moscow as well as its northern and southern districts for eight days, with residents saying they have struggled to stay in contact with each other while businesses report significant financial losses.
Since the disruptions began, sales of pagers have jumped by 73 percent, according to Wildberries, Russia’s largest retailer.
Purchases of walkie-talkies and landline telephones have also climbed by more than a quarter, while sales of paper city maps and printed guides to Moscow have nearly tripled.
It is believed that daily losses to businesses in the Russian capital from the internet shutdown could be up to one billion roubles ($12.5m) a day.
Russian authorities say the restrictions are intended as security measures to counter Ukrainian long-range drone attacks, which use mobile and GPS networks for navigation and control.
However, many industry experts believe they may also reflect preparations by the government to cut off Russians’ access to the global internet.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said on Wednesday that the restrictions would continue as long as “necessary to ensure the safety of our citizens.”
He also accused Ukraine of using “increasingly sophisticated attack methods” and said that “more technologically advanced countermeasures are needed” to repel them.
Under recently approved legislation, security services now have the authority to require Russian internet providers to suspend mobile internet services whenever they consider it appropriate.
State Duma lawmakers have complained about the outages affecting parliament itself, leaving them cut off from the internet inside the building. Peskov said on Friday that even the presidential administration had been forced to switch to landline phones.
Internet shutdowns have grown more frequent across Russia since Moscow began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
According to estimates from the research and analytics group Top10VPN, Russia recorded the highest number of internet disruptions worldwide in 2025.