Active Incident
Confirmed: censorship detected in Russia
Russia · August 19, 2026 · Ongoing
Evidence
100%
Anomaly Rate
16
Measurements
90%
Confidence
What This Means
100% of 16 network tests from Russia failed to reach these services. Global baseline failure rate is typically 1-3%. This 97+ percentage point difference strongly indicates intentional blocking.
How We Detected This
Data Sourceooni + censoredplanet
ML ModelGradientBoosting v3.3 (LOCO median F1 0.87, honest across 127 countries)
Confidence Score90% certainty of censorship
Detection TimeAugust 19, 2026
Corroborating Evidence (41)
Evidence collected from multiple independent sources. Upstream claims shown in quotes are not Voidly assertions.
OONIOpen Observatory of Network Interference16 records
blocking
"OONI signal: 456/547 measurements anomalous (83.4%)"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.83
Aug 19, 2026
View source →blocking
"OONI whatsapp: 290/355 measurements anomalous (81.7%)"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.82
Aug 19, 2026
View source →blocking
"OONI telegram: 306/353 measurements anomalous (86.7%)"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.87
Aug 19, 2026
View source →tor-blocking
"OONI tor: 345/349 measurements anomalous (98.9%)"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.99
Aug 19, 2026
View source →blocking
"OONI signal: 460/538 measurements anomalous (85.5%)"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.86
Aug 19, 2026
View source →+ 11 more OONI records
Censored PlanetUniversity of Michigan research25 records
dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 228/228 probes anomalous (100.0%) for bbc.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Aug 19, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 109/109 probes anomalous (100.0%) for chat.openai.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Aug 19, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 91/91 probes anomalous (100.0%) for chatgpt.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Aug 19, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 103/103 probes anomalous (100.0%) for claude.ai"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Aug 19, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 214/214 probes anomalous (100.0%) for facebook.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Aug 19, 2026
View source →+ 20 more Censored Planet records
Affected Services (4)
SignalTelegramTorWhatsApp
What we cannot say
- Who caused it — measurement data alone does not attribute this to any government, ISP, or other actor.
- Intent — anomalous or unreachable measurements indicate interference, not a stated motive or a deliberate-vs-incidental determination.
- Which networks — no specific ASN/ISP is identified for this incident.
- The mechanism — we cannot state whether this was DNS tampering, TLS/SNI reset, an HTTP blockpage, throttling, or an infrastructure outage.
- A confirmed duration — we report the observation window, not a verified start/stop of any block.
- Sub-national scope — measurement is aggregated at the country level; we cannot localize to a province, city, or network segment.
Cite This Incident
Voidly Research. (2026). Confirmed: censorship detected in Russia [RU-2026-3035]. Voidly Global Censorship Index. https://voidly.ai/incident/RU-2026-3035
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