Roskomnadzor told the St. Petersburg-based news outlet Fontanka that a fault on Rostelecom’s backbone network caused the widespread disruption to bank websites and apps, telecom operators, and other services in Russia on the evening of April 6.
The previous evening, Russian users reported problems with the websites and apps of Alfa-Bank, NTV Plus, Tricolor, Gosuslugi, T2, Mosenergosbyt, and other services.
Users also reported that Rostelecom’s home internet service had stopped working in Moscow. The company stated that it had detected a major DDoS attack on its network and had quickly neutralized it.
On the morning of April 7, Russian users continued to report disruptions to Gosuslugi.
In recent weeks, Roskomnadzor has been actively blocking Telegram in Russia. In late March, Russian authorities also stepped up their crackdown on VPN services.
Against that backdrop, several widespread outages hit Russian websites and apps in early April. On April 3, major disruptions struck Russian bank services, leaving customers unable to transfer money, withdraw cash, or pay by card for several hours.
Experts concluded that Roskomnadzor was responsible. The agency demanded that news outlets delete reports making that claim.
Natalia Kasperskaya, one of the founders of Kaspersky, was forced to apologize after saying that Roskomnadzor, in its frenzy to block circumvention tools, had knocked out half of Runet’s services.
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