“The hardest thing over these years has been trying to talk during the holidays, because it’s almost impossible,” said 35-year-old Anastasiia, who has lived in the US for four years while her parents remain in Sevastopol, Crimea. “I tried to call them on their wedding anniversary, but I couldn’t reach them at all.”
Even when contact is possible, certain topics are off-limits. “Politics, especially the war, can’t be mentioned,” she told this author. Her parents fear their Telegram calls are monitored. When they finally connected after two days of silence, her mother avoided direct language.
“She said, ‘Something was flying over our heads.’ I asked, drones? She nodded That’s how we communicate now, through hints and gestures.” Anastasiia last saw her parents before the full-scale invasion in 2022. Since then, their conversations have rarely gone beyond the weather and their health.
When Anastasiia tried to call in December, there was no connection on Telegram or WhatsApp. The same day, Sergey Aksyonov, the Kremlin-appointed head of Crimea, said mobile internet limitations would continue until the end of the war.
The restrictions are justified by the occupation authorities to protect against drones, according to Important Stories, a Russian media outlet. To maintain connectivity, some Ukrainian drones are reported to use Russian SIM cards during their final approach to targets, which is why the internet is being shut down.
But Ukraine’s National Resistance Center says the real motive is control. The occupation authorities view the internet as a threat because it enables documentation of events, organization by residents, and access to non-approved sources of information. Shutdowns are imposed at sensitive moments, such as during attacks, crises, or periods of growing public discontent.
Kateryna, from Kerch, says connections are slow even between Crimeans. “They can’t communicate with each other properly. I think their connection is being deliberately jammed,” she said. “My mom says the mobile service works very poorly, and they can’t even call a taxi using mobile phones. Calling from Kerch to Sevastopol shouldn’t be a problem, but it is.”
She stays in touch with her relatives through WhatsApp, but voice calls are no longer possible. “Text messages work, and we can send voice messages. My mom turns on a VPN, and once a week or once every two weeks she can make a call,” Kateryna said. “Viber hasn’t worked for them for a long time, and Signal has been banned as well.”
It’s not just Crimea. I asked people in the other occupied territories of Ukraine when the growing problems with the internet and messenger services began. The majority said it was in the summer and fall of last year.
“WhatsApp, Telegram, Google Hangouts, sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. With a VPN or without, there’s no logic,” said Maria, whose parents live in occupied Enerhodar. “There are days when nothing works at all.”
The situation is similarly unstable in the occupied Kherson region, where Telegram stopped functioning in late 2025. “WhatsApp — knock on wood — still works for now,” said Olena, who is now in Warsaw. “My father and grandmother live in the same village, and I can talk to him, but not to her. Sometimes they can’t even call each other.”
In the occupied Luhansk and Donetsk regions, the isolation is even deeper. Residents have had problems with Viber and WhatsApp for at least two years. Last year, access to Telegram also deteriorated sharply, with the occupation authorities deliberately slowing and restricting communications since the summer.
“From time to time, we communicate with relatives, for example via Telegram,” said Andrii Dikhtiarenko, a Ukrainian journalist and editor-in-chief of Realna Gazeta, a Ukrainian outlet originally based in Luhansk but now operating in exile. “But I have not used messengers to communicate with sources in the occupied territories since at least 2022. We rely on other means of communication. In fact, email is often even safer.”
“You’re constantly playing a cat-and-mouse game with the Russians, looking for some access they haven’t managed to shut down yet,” he said.
Realna Gazeta’s website is blocked in the occupied territories, Dikhtiarenko said, and YouTube access has been throttled. Chinese-owned TikTok, however, is a rare loophole.
“From the very beginning, we were getting millions of views on TikTok,” he said. “Our first video in 2023 explained how to leave the occupied part of the Kherson region. It went viral immediately, and we did the same for every region, on how to leave, what routes to take, and so on.”
People living under occupation and their exiled relatives say the Russian goal is to isolate people living in the occupied territories. They use intimidation to do so and warn of “information terrorism,” claiming that people who use Telegram are at risk of losing money from their bank accounts through fraud, for example.
Moscow wants to drive people to domestic messaging apps that are fully controlled by Russia and monitored by its security services, such as Max, which is meant to replace all other messaging platforms.
Its creators claimed the app had 75 million users by December, six months after its launch. Max collects all user data — effectively spying on its users — and serves as an active tool for Russian propaganda and the security services.
Reporters Without Borders condemned the platform as an instrument of digital control that traps users in Ukraine’s occupied territories in an information prison.
Many can’t travel to see their relatives, as they are blocked by the occupying authorities and filtration procedures, and, with each passing month, the isolation deepens.
Cutting off the internet and messaging platforms doesn’t just silence the truth; it severs families. Any future settlement for Ukraine that ignores this reality risks leaving millions behind the lines, unheard and unseen.
Elina Beketova is a Non-resident Fellow with the Democratic Resilience program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). She is the author of Behind the Lines, a database and article series focused on Ukraine’s temporarily occupied territories. Elina began her career as a journalist in Crimea and later worked as a journalist, editor, and TV anchor for news stations in Kharkiv and Kyiv.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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