Russian military police are checking soldiers’ phones for Telegram — ISW says this deepens Russia’s command and control crisis

Some Russian military units are ordering soldiers to delete the Telegram messenger app from their phones and are promoting the state-controlled Max app as a replacement, a prominent Russian milblogger reported on 15 March — a move the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) says will likely deepen the command and control (C2) crisis Russian forces have struggled with since the February Starlink block.

Military police checking phones

The Russian milblogger reported that Russian sources in the field said unspecified elements of the Russian military have issued instructions for soldiers to remove Telegram from their devices, and that military police are checking phones to verify compliance. The same milblogger noted that the Max app — which Russia has been pushing as a Telegram replacement — "remains very inconvenient to use," and that some unspecified special forces units have gone further and banned Max entirely.

Enforcement is uneven: some units are enforcing the orders to delete Telegram and switch to Max, while others continue communicating through Telegram. The milblogger said this suggests the orders arise from particular units rather than from a universal standard enforced by the Russian Defense Ministry.

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Contradiction with Kremlin statements

The unit-level crackdown directly contradicts Russia's official line. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated on 11 February that Russian forces are not using Telegram for frontline communications. The Kremlin began backtracking on 18 February after widespread backlash from Russian milbloggers. Russia's Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadayev claimed that Russian officials had not made a decision to restrict Telegram in the war zone, ISW reported.

ISW writes that units banning Telegram ahead of official orders is "noteworthy" and raises two possibilities: either Russia is still planning a more universal frontline ban, or individual commanders are enforcing the policy ahead of official orders to gain favor with the Kremlin.

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Compounding the Starlink crisis

ISW warns that Telegram deletions will likely degrade Russian C2 and worsen communication problems that Russian forces have struggled with since the 1 February Starlink block. After SpaceX and Ukraine's Defense Ministry cut off unauthorized Russian Starlink terminals, Russia's frontline coordination collapsed in many areas — with Ukraine's defense minister's adviser, Serhii Beskrestnov, describing the situation as a "catastrophe."

Russia's own troops warned after Telegram was throttled in February that losing the platform would "roll us back several years — approximately to the beginning of the war." Telegram deletions on top of the Starlink shutdown represent a second blow to the same communications infrastructure.