Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg, has faced a complete mobile internet shutdown for the first time. Previously, only four regions — Krasnoyarsk, Buryatia, Belgorod, and Rostov regions — had experienced similar issues, the Russian service of the BBC reported in the project "In Touch." The cause of the shutdown was drone attacks.
Mobile internet has virtually disappeared in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region from December 11 to 12 after authorities declared an air threat.
On December 12, the governor of the Leningrad region, Alexander Drozdenko, stated that "law enforcement agencies, based on the operational situation," are blocking and slowing down certain web applications and temporarily restricting mobile communication for safety reasons, "considering the geopolitical location of the region."
The regional head did not rule out that due to "possible provocations, drone attacks, and attempts of cyber interference in the operation of infrastructure," restrictions may remain during the New Year holidays and school vacations.
Then, an air threat was declared in the Leningrad region on the night of December 13 to 14, and on the morning of December 15, mobile internet disappeared again in St. Petersburg.
During the day and evening, the mobile operator Beeline sent notifications to subscribers about network failures in some areas of the city. Beeline reported that communication is being restricted for safety reasons and reminded users of services that should work even during outages — "white lists."
Users of other operators complained about their lack of internet access.
The last air threat was declared on December 16. The administration of St. Petersburg reported that there may be interruptions in mobile internet, and in some areas of the city, mobile data transmission speeds may be reduced to 2G.
"The technologies are standard, nothing is changing," explained BBC in the project "In Touch." According to them, there is simply a "switching mode on cellular towers from 4G to 2G."
People Continue to Use YouTube via VPN
Shortly after the drone attacks, users from St. Petersburg began reporting that they could not access YouTube. On the night of December 13, the provider SkyNet confirmed the issue. In the morning, the provider eTelecom reported the same, and on December 15, a similar post appeared on social media from Nevalink. All providers stated that they did not restrict access to the service. SkyNet and Nevalink clarified that this is being done by Roskomnadzor.
According to Russian monitoring services for internet outages Downdetector.su and Sboi.rf, St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region were among the regions with the highest number of complaints about the video hosting service at the time of publication.
BBC interlocutors living in St. Petersburg reported on December 17 that they are able to access YouTube using a VPN.
State Duma Announced Complete Block of YouTube
Against this backdrop, a statement was made that YouTube needs to be blocked in Russia. On December 16, this was stated by the deputy head of the State Duma committee on information policy, Andrey Svintsov.
Access speed to YouTube has been limited since 2024. The basis for this was that the service owner, Google, does not store data of Russian users in Russia and does not remove videos banned in the country. In the summer of 2025, Roskomnadzor reported that there were no grounds to lift the ban.
At the same time, Google does not record any worsening of access to YouTube in Russia over the past month. Only slight fluctuations are observed against the backdrop of already reduced traffic following the start of restrictions in late July 2024.
Leave a comment