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After a large-scale crash in Telegram, Viber and WhatsApp messengers, previously blocked social networks have returned to Russia, in particular Instagram* and X (formerly Twitter).

Now you can access them without using VPN services.

We checked their work from different devices and access was open everywhere, Russian media reports.

There are no official comments from Roskomnadzor, which blocks banned sites and social networks.

However, previously, in October 2022, a similar situation had already happened.

Then the blocked social networks were available for several days, and this period coincided with the repair of equipment in an organization controlled by Roskomnadzor.

Today’s outage lasted more than two hours. It started around 12:28 Moscow time.

Since then, messengers – Telegram, WhatsApp and Viber – as well as YouTube, some banking applications and other services stopped working.

Their work was fully restored closer to 15:00 Moscow time.

The Ministry of Digital Development, commenting on the failure, said that problems with access to instant messages and services are not unique to Russia.

And Roskomnadzor specified that problems were observed among users in the USA and Germany.

This is not the first time this month that messengers have stopped working. The last time a mass Telegram outage was reported was on February 18, when it was unreachable from Russia, the US and Japan.

* Instagram has been declared an „extremist organization“ and its activity is banned in the Russian Federation.