Active Incident
Sustained censorship in Russia (2026-05)
Russia · May 1, 2026 · Ongoing
OONI detected 3 days of elevated network interference averaging 50.0% anomaly rate.
Evidence
50%
Anomaly Rate
3
Measurements
69%
Confidence
What This Means
50% of tests showed anomalies, above the typical 1-3% baseline. This suggests potential network interference.
How We Detected This
Data Sourceooni + censoredplanet
ML ModelGradientBoosting v3.3 (LOCO median F1 0.87, honest across 127 countries)
Confidence Score69% certainty of censorship
Detection TimeMay 1, 2026
Corroborating Evidence (92)
Evidence collected from multiple independent sources. Upstream claims shown in quotes are not Voidly assertions.
OONIOpen Observatory of Network Interference67 records
blocking
"OONI signal: 680/791 measurements anomalous (86.0%)"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.86
May 4, 2026
View source →blocking
"OONI whatsapp: 273/330 measurements anomalous (82.7%)"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.83
May 4, 2026
View source →blocking
"OONI telegram: 272/315 measurements anomalous (86.3%)"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.86
May 4, 2026
View source →tor-blocking
"OONI tor: 276/303 measurements anomalous (91.1%)"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.91
May 4, 2026
View source →blocking
"OONI signal: 901/1038 measurements anomalous (86.8%)"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.87
May 4, 2026
View source →+ 62 more OONI records
Censored PlanetUniversity of Michigan research25 records
dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 20/20 probes anomalous (100.0%) for bbc.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
May 3, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 20/20 probes anomalous (100.0%) for chat.openai.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
May 3, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 21/21 probes anomalous (100.0%) for chatgpt.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
May 3, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 18/18 probes anomalous (100.0%) for claude.ai"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
May 3, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 17/17 probes anomalous (100.0%) for facebook.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
May 3, 2026
View source →+ 20 more Censored Planet records
Affected Services (13)
ChatGPTClaudeFacebookGeminiInstagramProtonVPNSignalTelegramTikTokTorWhatsAppXYouTube
Blocked Domains (25)
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). Sustained censorship in Russia (2026-05) [RU-2026-0216]. Voidly Global Censorship Index. https://voidly.ai/incident/RU-2026-0216