An odious former Putin adviser thinks the Internet is unnecessary for Russians.
Telegram should be slowed down or even blocked in Russia in order for citizens to switch to the national state messenger, the law on the creation of which was unanimously passed by the State Duma this week. German Klimenko, chairman of the board of the Digital Economy Development Foundation and former presidential adviser for Internet development, said this on Solovyov Live.
According to Klimenko, the state should intervene in the situation with the popularity of Telegram, which has 90 million users in Russia, is leading in terms of audience growth (+6 million people per year) and is only slightly behind VK, which had 93 million active users at the beginning of 2025.
Russians, according to Klimenko, “will still eventually switch” to the state messenger, which the authorities plan to connect to the “Gosuslugi” system to eliminate the anonymity of users. “It’s important to decide – quickly and forcibly or slowly and voluntarily,” Klimenko said. – “Probably, the state should ‘help’ Telegram a little bit: either worsen its connection or ban it altogether.”
A graduate of the Red Banner Military Engineering Institute, who traded MMM shares in the early 1990s and then created a number of major runet projects, Klimenko got on the warpath against foreign Internet services soon after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. In particular, he proposed blocking Facebook and Google, arguing that Russians would move en masse to Yandex and Russian internet companies would earn more money.
“The state is designed to interfere in our lives,” Klimenko said. From 2016 to 2018, he served as presidential advisor on internet development. In this position, he was tasked with the import substitution of foreign software with domestic software and “tax on Google,” Meduza wrote.