At the beginning of April 2026, the Russian government’s attempts to limit access to anything out of its control on the internet kicked into high gear. Apart from ongoing mobile internet shutdowns — including an unprecedented one in the capital that lasted for three weeks — there is now a war on VPNs, attempts to try out “white lists” on both mobile and home internet connections, and blockage of the last “Western” messenger, Telegram.

It might be a strange coincidence, but the Israeli–US war on Iran, “Operation Epic Fury,” which has employed a lot of AI warfare, started on February 28 — a week before the full mobile internet shutdown in Moscow. During the first few days of the war up to March 3, as many as 17 high-ranking Iranian government and military officials were killed in strategic targeted strikes involving AI warfare strategies.

According to the BBC, since February 28, the United States has launched more than 11,000 strikes against Iran, many reportedly identified by project Marvin AI. Maven Smart Systems is a project by the Palantir company, which has been developing AI-enabled solutions for the Pentagon since 2017. Maven uses machine learning algorithms to analyze and fuse vast amounts of surveillance data from multiple sources, made possible through data integration. Since 2025, it also integrates large language models (LLMs), such as Anthropic’s Claude, to enhance intelligence fusion, targeting, and accelerated decision-making. The data that the project uses to analyse and identify potential targets include photographs, satellite imagery, geolocation data (IP address, geotag, metadata, etc.) from communications intercepts, infrared sensors, synthetic-aperture radar, and more.

The use of AI warfare in Iran has been criticised by experts. In an interview with France 24, political theory professor Elke Schwarz described the radical acceleration of both the process of identifying military targets using artificial intelligence and the speed of decision-making regarding strikes, noting that in the first 24 hours of this war alone, the US launched a thousand missiles per day — about 41 missiles per hour — against specific targets. To Schwarz, this implies a virtual absence of human oversight over such decisions, as it is physically impossible to ensure such a level of control. The professor believes this is extremely dangerous, especially considering that AI models have a reliability of only 25–50 percent, meaning they are very often wrong. She added that legislators and international organizations need to intervene, to determine the permissibility and impermissibility of using such AI models in military operations.

Although it is beyond the scope of this article to describe the technical specifications of how AI warfare initiatives like Project Maven specifically identify human targets, it is possible that shutting down most of the mobile internet in Moscow from March 6–24 — as well as other measures to control the remaining pieces of the Russian internet — was triggered by its use, according to some Ukrainian sources.

TV Rain and other independent media claimed that Putin was very concerned about his safety after the US kidnapped Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. Various media sources also claimed that Putin’s paranoia might have grown since the “cynical murder” — as Putin himself called it — of Khamenei and other high-ranking Iranian officials.

The only comment that journalists received about this unprecedented mobile internet shutdown in Moscow was from Putin’s press secretary Peskov, who kept saying that it was done in the name of “security.” Although mobile internet shutdowns have been going on in Russia for months now, they have never before been implemented at such a scale. It collapsed not only a large part of the digitally-based service sector in Moscow, but also the metro, grocery stores, and even public toilets. Independent Russian media outlet The Bell wrote that, according to their sources, the requirement to restrict internet access in certain districts of Moscow was given to operators by the Scientific and Technical Service (STS) of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s main security agency.

The shutdowns were “handed down from above,” a government official confirmed. According to the source, the government did not know the reasons, but the justification was countering threats, though the specific types of threats remain unknown. “A certain map was received from the STS of the FSB, marking where the internet needed to be switched off. At the same time, law enforcement officials strongly hinted that this was not their decision; it had also been passed down to them,” one of The Bell’s sources said.

Later on, the popular and the last remaining “Western” messenger, Telegram, was blocked, in spite of the fact that even those from the military fighting in Ukraine were actively against it. However, Telegram’s owner Pavel Durov said that, even after the block, nearly 65 million people from Russia still use Telegram every day.

After that, Roskomnadzor, the federal executive agency responsible for mass media, attempted to block VPN traffic, and half of Russia’s internet services stopped working, including banking apps and state services. Some IT specialists and media — even those loyal to the state, like Nataliya Kasperskaya — said that Roskomnadzor, “in the frenzy of fighting methods to bypass blocks, has taken down half of the Runet’s services.” She later had to delete her post and apologize.

Roskomnadzor and the Ministry of Digital Development then moved to make the remaining Russia-based platforms such as the search engine Yandex, social media VK, and online market Ozon block users who use their internet services while employing VPNs. According to some media sources, having been threatened with measures such as eliminating them from white lists and depriving them of licences to work; they were forced to sign an agreement to comply with those instructions. Despite the possibility that the blockage might damage their businesses and destroy any international strategies they might have, there is evidence that the companies have already started doing just that, despite the fact that most of them have owners and CEOs who are closely connected to the Kremlin. Some investigative journalists have even suggested that some of the remaining platforms bring income to Putin and his friends the Kovalchuk brothers.

The companies are now also obliged to spy on their users and pass on the data to the authorities. VPN detection is proposed in three stages: first, companies must determine a user’s IP address; next, they must search for signs of circumvention tools on the device through their own applications; and finally, they are required to check devices running operating systems beyond Android and iOS.

It is important to understand, writes The Bell, that this marks a shift from passive internet censorship to active enforcement. “In essence, every such application will become spyware,” explains one VPN developer. In other words, any app from a Russian online platform risks becoming similar to Max. Most likely, in the near future, applications linked to Russia will track VPN usage and forward their findings for blocking. This measure is highly effective and difficult to circumvent.”

Investigative journalist Andrei Zakharov explains in the Meduza podcast that Alexandra Prokopenko, author of a book about the Russian elites of Putin’s regime, recently wrote that Putin and other old people from the siloviki, are now the ones in control in the Kremlin. Zakharov emphasises that if this group decides there is a threat — imagined or not — they simply shut everything down, as they want to know exactly what Russians think, say, watch and do on the internet.

Additional proof that Putin and the siloviki are impressed by AI warfare, is that the Russian leader began to actively speak about AI. Putin spoke at a meeting about the importance of developing Russia’s own LLMs and introducing them in every institution, including the military. This sits in stark contrast with the fact that there are constant internet shutdowns, and all access to foreign technological services is blocked. Moreover, because there is such a war on international traffic and VPNs, even access to open source tech innovations like GitHub or Hugging Face would be severely restricted.

It's worth noting that Russia has also been using AI technologies in its war on Ukraine, albeit via narrow, niche models with specific objectives. As the Center for Strategic and International Studies notes, Russian developers are using open language models, such as Mistral, Qwen, LLaMA, and YOLO, to create programs for autonomous military platforms with AI elements. These include drones and other unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as guidance and interception systems. Thus, Russia is less dependent on sanctions — the models are openly available — and Russian developers don’t have to create them from scratch; instead, they can build military AI solutions using existing foreign open source development tools.

Before the Ukraine war, Russia had an AI development program through 2030, held hackathons, and created startups. Some experts even predicted that Russia, with its powerful mathematical training system and funding for AI development, could become a serious niche player in AI. Now, Putin is speaking of AI again, but with an emphasis on defence, warfare, and sovereignty. There is also the possibility that foreign AI solutions could be blocked in 2027 as part of this new strategy.

However, even pre-war AI developments in Russia had mixed consequences. This was highlighted by a recent scandal in which it was discovered — according to an investigation by Le Monde and Forbidden Stories — that Iran acquired Russian company NtechLab’s FindFace facial recognition system to combat protests.

The same facial recognition systems had already been in use in Russia before the war with Ukraine. In Moscow, they helped identify protesters, and during the war, they identified conscripts attempting to avoid being sent to the front. Although there is currently no full internet shutdown in Russia in contrast with Iran, and no domestic internet like in North Korea, the Russian version gets closer daily.