DIGITAL KREMLIN WALL. IS MOSCOW ADAPTING BEIJING’S EXPERIENCE IN INFORMATION SECURITY?

In the summer of 2025, information about the new Messenger MAX, developed by VK Media, the owner of the popular Russian social network VKontakte, an analogue of Facebook and completely controlled by the Kremlin, began to spread rapidly in the Russian media. The Russian authorities have long been conducting not very successful experiments with this network, within which a failed analogue of YouTube, RuTube, was already developed. The authorities have not managed to come up with convincing forms of attracting producers of popular content to this platform, despite all their efforts.

Russian officials decided not to stand on ceremony with the new messenger MAX. Immediately after its announcement, repressive and administrative measures began to force people to switch from the Kremlin’s “hostile” Whatsapp and Telegram, which do not want to obey its demands and remain popular in society. Whatsapp was even threatened to be closed in the near future, which was voiced by senior officials, for example, Putin’s talking head – Dmitry Peskov. Since mid-July and to this day, painstaking work has been underway to transfer state and personal official accounts to the new messenger. Various threats are voiced for those who do not want to part with convenient communications, and promotions and privileges are offered to those who agree, designed to draw the audience of budget employees into MAX. It is worth noting that this time the Kremlin may succeed. MAX is a carbon copy of the Chinese WeChat with some adaptations of Whatsapp functions and a similar visual. It is clear that a lot of work has been done and is aimed at not causing rejection among regular Whatapp and Telegram users. The transition should be simple and comfortable, the functions and button layout should be as similar as possible. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Based on some insider documents, it was possible to establish that work with the application has been going on for a long time and painstakingly. In particular, a report prepared by the Russian Academy of Sciences for a large meeting with the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation and the main educational institutions of the country in mid-July showed that the messenger is actively used and implemented in the higher education system of the Russian Federation. It already has an active system for admission and passing exams (including online), collecting reports from higher education institutions, student personal profiles and related educational groups. Through MAX, a system for receiving scholarships, travel passes, student discounts and a pass system (using the Face ID function) has been implemented. The July report presents figures for at least the results of the summer program for passing exams and admission to universities of applicants. It presents a very impressive list of participants in the form of hundreds of educational institutions of Russia. Probably, based on this report, Putin presented to the public his demand to the authorities to ensure the ability to support domestic software by September 1 while simultaneously restricting everything “hostile”. This primarily concerns the messenger praised on all possible channels. Whatever it is, good or bad, it seems that the Kremlin is already so afraid of its inability to keep the information agenda under control that it is preparing for more radical steps to isolate it. So the Russian authorities recognized the presence of a VPN as an aggravating circumstance.

How successful will this experience be? Just look at China, where an internal Internet with its own messengers has existed for several decades and a ban on VPNs is also in effect. Does this help the Chinese authorities? Not quite. Of course, the majority, as in any society in a similar situation, lives and acts according to the government’s plan. But the educated and wealthy part of society, which has the greatest influence on the formation of the real internal views of the elite, successfully bypasses all these restrictions. Given all the previous experience, one can hardly expect the Russian authorities to create successful independent projects of this scale. As always, we will see an imitation of the Chinese imitation, which will only formally be implemented and used in Russian society in the same way – in the form of doublethink, familiar from Soviet times. At work I sit in MAX, at home with a VPN. Future anthropologists, specialists in imitation autocracies, will have something to study.