Mobile internet access will be restricted in annexed Crimea for the duration of Russia’s war in Ukraine as a security measure, the peninsula’s Moscow-installed Governor Sergei Aksyonov said Tuesday.
“We simply need to accept this reality and adapt,” Aksyonov told the state-run news outlet Sputnik. The restrictions may come in the form of slower internet speeds or a complete outage.
“We can’t let the enemy use the internet against us,” he later wrote on Telegram, citing regular Ukrainian drone attacks, some of which he said rely on Russia’s mobile phone networks for remote control.
Crimea is the second region where an official has publicly announced an open-ended mobile internet restriction tied to the war, following a similar declaration last month by the governor of central Russia’s Ulyanovsk region.
Intermittent internet outages across Russia began in early May amid an uptick in Ukrainian drone attacks and have since spread to most regions, including parts of Siberia and the Far East.
Authorities say the measures are intended to disrupt drone operations.
Amid the outages, officials have introduced a so-called “white list” of approved services that are supposed to remain accessible during mobile internet shutdowns, but some have complained that the services often fail to work.
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