Russia's VPN crackdown is disrupting banking services

Russian authorities moved to block Telegram and started restricting VPN and encrypted tunneling traffic.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov said Telegram is banned in Russia but over 50 million people still access it daily via VPNs.

Bloomberg-cited sources say the VPN crackdown may have overloaded Roskomnadzor's filters and caused widespread banking connectivity problems.

Authorities are promoting a domestic super-app called Max to centralize social and payment services.