When Boris Nadezhdin gets in his car to cross several Russian regions each month, the opposition politician always travels with two phones.
One is his official device. It’s attached to his main phone number; on it, he has downloaded the new Max app, something Russia is trying to position as an indispensable communication tool.
On his other phone, are the apps he uses for personal communication, along with a virtual private network, or VPN, that he relies on to circumvent Russia’s growing internet restrictions.
“I have made [the same decision] as a lot of my friends,” Nadezhdin said in an interview with CBC News from Dolgoprudny, a city just outside of Moscow.
“Unfortunately, we have very big problems with the internet, with mobile communications.”
The recent introduction of Max, which is owned by Russian media company VK, is the Kremlin’s latest effort to tighten control over the country’s digital space by throttling foreign platforms, either by blocking them or slowing them down so they are largely inaccessible.
The Max app, created by the media company VK, is a messaging platform and a portal to access government services.
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