Asian messaging apps surged in popularity in Russia in March as Telegram faced mounting restrictions, with monthly active user numbers rising an average of 60 percent, according to research by MTS AdTech cited by the Russian business daily Kommersant.
The Turkish app BiP posted the largest gain among established platforms, with its monthly active audience climbing 105 percent to 1.68 million users. South Korea’s KakaoTalk grew by 82 percent, to 436,400 users. China’s WeChat added 15 percent, reaching 1.15 million active users in Russia.
The fastest growth of all belonged to Telega, an unofficial Telegram client, whose monthly active audience jumped 160 percent to nearly 7.5 million users, MTS AdTech said. In early April, Telega was removed from the App Store after its security certificates were revoked.
Other mobile carriers reported similar trends. T2 noted growth in WeChat usage beginning in mid-January, while flagging that registering for the app is difficult because it requires receiving a text message from China. KakaoTalk saw a sharp rise in popularity among T2 users in late March. MegaFon also recorded growth across KakaoTalk, BiP, and WeChat.
Telegram’s overall audience in Russia declined only slightly despite the restrictions — by 1.5 percent in the first quarter of 2026 compared with the fourth quarter of 2025, Kommersant reported. The app retained its position as the leading platform in Russia, with a monthly active audience of 102 million users.
Users in Russia began experiencing disruptions to Telegram in early March. Sources at several outlets reported that the app was set to be fully blocked in Russia starting April 1. By March, many users could no longer access Telegram without circumvention tools, and by April 10, an international research project OONI reported that the level of anomalies indicating signs of Telegram being blocked had reached 95 percent.
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