During its war of aggression, Russia has banned numerous Western websites and social media services.
12.10. 12:43•Updated 12.10. 13:02
Earlier this week, Roskomnadzor, the Russian communications, information technology and mass media monitoring service, banned the use of the US instant messaging and video calling service Discord in Russia.
Roskomnadzor’s sudden decision to block the service has enraged Russian war bloggers and left the country’s military in a difficult situation, US newspaper The Washington Post says.
The Russian military has been using Discord for internal communication and strike coordination throughout its war in Ukraine. Now the Russian forces have lost one of their most important communication channels.
The plight of the country’s forces is compounded by the fact that the Russian authorities have not succeeded in developing a reliable and secure replacement for the service.
– The replacement service should have been ready and the commanders should have been warned in advance so that the communication chains on the front were not broken in one moment, The Washington Post reports that one Russian blogger said.
The decision causes confusion
Discord’s ban has sparked a wider debate in Russia about how Moscow’s bureaucrats are causing difficulties for their army at war in Ukraine with their short-sighted actions.
The popular war blogger known as Rybari by Mikhail Zvinchuk according to this, it is natural for Russian forces to resort to Western services if there is no Russian alternative available.
– From a military point of view, the biggest problem is not that certain command posts no longer get a direct view of the drones, but that the Ministry of Defense does not try to offer the troops new options at all, Zvinchuk says in Telegram.
Communication channel for video gamers
Discord is a communication service originally developed for video gamers, which enables real-time communication between gamers.
During the corona pandemic, the service also started to be used more widely. For example, the Russian army used it for mass calls and sharing real-time video from the front.
Russia has banned numerous Western websites and social media services in order to create its own independent internet.
Roskomnadzor justifies the recent ban on Discord by saying that the service could have been used for malicious purposes. Last month, Russia fined the service’s parent company for not agreeing to remove “prohibited content” from its service.