Russian lawmakers have taken a significant step towards creating a national “super app,” with the State Duma today voting to approve legislation for an official instant messaging platform. This new “multifunctional information exchange service,” envisioned as Russia’s equivalent to WhatsApp, aims to consolidate various online services under state oversight.
The new service will allow Russians to use it for diverse bureaucratic and legal purposes, such as electronically signing legal documents. While the law doesn’t explicitly state government control, the business newspaper Vedomosti reported in March that Vkontakte (VK), Russia’s equivalent of Facebook and controlled by a Kremlin-aligned oligarch, is developing a new digital platform called “Max.” This platform is expected to integrate chat, messaging, payment services, and other applications.
For years, Russian authorities have expressed irritation with the presence and independence of major foreign tech companies like Microsoft, Facebook, and YouTube. Since the late 1990s, the government has been building a “sovereign internet” infrastructure, designed for strict control and surveillance. Regulators have pressured companies to host servers within Russia, and the Kremlin has increasingly taken control of domestic internet firms like VK and Yandex. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, has been declared an “extremist organization” in Russia.
In 2011, the government launched Gosuslugi, an e-governance portal now used by approximately 100 million Russians. In recent years, Gosuslugi has moved towards integrating more of its services into VK, and regulators have used it to redirect users from blocked platforms like Instagram to VK. Experts, both Russian and Western, view this as a push towards a “super app” similar to China’s WeChat, which serves billions of monthly users.
Last month, Maksut Shadayev, Russia’s Minister of Digital Development, suggested that the new Max app could be integrated into Gosuslugi. On June 4, President Vladimir Putin publicly supported the creation of the new messaging service, ordering officials to “support the Russian messaging platform” and “help transfer services currently offered by government agencies and financial institutions” to it.
