A sharp rise in Ukrainian drone attacks on targets deep inside Russian territory has led to targeted and prolonged mobile internet shutdowns. This has hit cash registers, public transport, logistics, and geolocation services, and increased pressure on the wartime economy. According to The Financial Times, in summer the local “blackouts” lasted from several hours to weeks, and the number of mobile data outages in July–August exceeded 2,000 episodes — more than triple the June level (statistics from the “Na Svyazi” tech support project).
“The war has come to Russia”: how outages became routine
Responding to strikes on air bases and other strategic facilities, the Kremlin temporarily shuts down communication networks in sensitive zones to hinder drone guidance. Mikhail Klimarev, director of the exiled rights group Internet Protection Society, summed it up: “The war has finally reached Russia. Drones are arriving, and this is how they’re trying to defend themselves.”
For millions of users the consequences are immediate. Online cash registers crash, transport card validators stop working, couriers can’t build routes, and car-sharing apps fail to display nearby vehicles. According to Internet Protection Society estimates, one hour of internet shutdown costs the country ₽46.4bn (about $557.1mn), and Moscow alone — ₽9.6bn (about $115.1mn). These are direct and indirect losses from halted payments, logistics, and digital services.
“Back to analog”: how people adapt
In August, state TV handed out “lifehacks” for digital darkness. A verbatim on-air instruction went:
“Enable [near field communication] in your phone’s settings, then you can send money to another person by simply holding your smartphone up to theirs. This technology works through radio waves.”
In the city of Vladimir (about 180 km east of Moscow), residents had to literally memorize bus timetables — without mobile internet, familiar navigation apps are useless. One local woman sees an unexpected upside: “When we meet up with friends, we talk more instead of being on our phones.”
Map of outages: where the jamming lasts longest
“Blackouts” most often blanket areas around military and industrial sites — connectivity can be down from a few hours to several days. But there are protracted cases. In the Nizhny Novgorod region, home to the Sverdlov munitions plant and the Korund chemical works, entire districts remained without mobile internet for more than two months at a time. Previously, strikes on the regional center were recorded once every few months in 2024, but this year their frequency has increased. Governor Gleb Nikitin explained it this way:
“Our region has many industrial and strategic sites that are of ‘interest’ to the enemy. That is why the areas with a weak signal are large and affect many residential districts.”
At the same time, GPS jamming is often activated in “closed” areas. The effect can be absurd: a Muscovite cycling by the Kremlin shared on Facebook, “I was cycling by the Kremlin when my phone congratulated me on completing my first 185 km ride — from Simferopol across the territory of Ukraine.”
Business under pressure: from car-sharing to retail
Connectivity failures hit every sector dependent on mobile data and precise geolocation. At Delimobil — one of the largest car-sharing services — they admit that users stop seeing available cars on the map, and technicians can’t promptly service the fleet:
“We estimate the negative effect at up to 10 per cent of revenue. For us, that’s a lot.” said Andrei Novikov, the company’s head of corporate finance, commenting on last month’s results.
For retail and food service, shutdowns mean till downtime and a reversion to cash. The Bank of Russia notes a structural shift in customer behavior: in July, cash in circulation grew by another $2.2bn, which the regulator links to “households and businesses building up cash reserves for payments amid news of temporary internet outages in certain regions.”
A wartime economy: sanctions, equipment, and a long “drift downward”
Connectivity shutdowns overlay a broader picture of disruptions in an economy that has lived under Western sanctions since 2022. In the first half of this year, businesses already faced supply-chain interruptions and record interest rates. Now, risks of “digital failures” have been added.
The situation is exacerbated by refitting networks without Western vendors. After Finland’s Nokia and Sweden’s Ericsson left, Huawei is essentially the only major supplier remaining in Russia, with a significant portion of equipment entering via gray channels and “not in the volumes needed,” Klimarev notes. Russia — a country spanning 11 time zones — operates more than 1.3 million base stations, thousands of which require replacement each year. Before the war, more than 50,000 units per year were procured just to maintain the network. Today, the expert says, “Now it is very hard to do that,” and warns of a slow, years-long decline in connectivity: “The more the economy deteriorates, the worse the quality of the network will get.”
Social effect: control in the digital sphere and propaganda
Local “blackouts” amplify the sense of unfreedom: in parallel, the authorities are tightening the screws online — from censorship to expanding war propaganda and disinformation campaigns at home and abroad. For the average user, this shows up in everyday inconveniences — from being unable to pay for transport to the disappearance of familiar maps in apps. For businesses — in direct revenue losses and disrupted operations. For the state — in having to choose between tactical security and strategic digital resilience.
Why it matters
- Anti-drone tactics are turning into an economic factor: the scale of “targeted” shutdowns is already measured in thousands of episodes per month.
- The price of an hour of network silence is tens of billions of roubles; Moscow loses the most, but regional centers suffer longer.
- Infrastructure shortfalls (vendors’ exit, gray imports, complex logistics across 11 time zones) are pushing the sector toward a long degradation trend.
- Behavioral shifts among consumers (a rise in cash usage, “analog” habits) are not a one-off reaction but a new pattern amid uncertainty.
This article was prepared based on materials published by The Financial Times. The author does not claim authorship of the original text but presents their interpretation of the content for informational purposes.
The original article can be found at the following link: The Financial Times.
All rights to the original text belong to The Financial Times.
