Kremlin enters the chat with Russia’s new super-app

The Kremlin has struggled for years to curb internet freedoms and curtail the reach of Western tech platforms that have amassed huge user bases inside Russia. A new Russian super-app is now making that goal possible.

Max is a messaging and e-commerce platform run by tech giant VK that is expanding to offer everything from taxi-hailing services to electronic passport wallets, modeled on China’s WeChat.

With full-throated government backing, Max is being pushed by pro-Kremlin celebrities as a safer equivalent to Telegram and WhatsApp, the popular messaging platforms now being throttled by Russian censors.

Lauded as a paragon of a digital import substitution plan that aims to swap out all Western apps with homegrown analogues, it follows a trend of Russian knockoffs, including a video-hosting platform akin to YouTube and Russia’s own version of Apple and Android’s app stores.

But data-privacy activists say that the unencrypted new app is the tip of the spear in a growing censorship apparatus that will allow the Kremlin to see and hear everything its citizens do online, reading private messages, hoovering up personal data and identifying which users of the app are using virtual private networks to circumvent government blocks.

They warn that it is also accelerating a global splintering of the internet into disparate realms controlled by authoritarian states.

“These super apps that offer convenience are useful, but they’re also Trojan horses,” said Amy Webb, chief executive of the Future Today Institute. She said platforms such as Max and WeChat act as one-stop government surveillance tools carried in each citizen’s pocket. “I have no idea why anybody would voluntarily use it.”

Russians aren’t exactly being given a choice. Every new smartphone bought in Russia must now come with Max preloaded, while Telegram and WhatsApp are being blocked. The Kremlin is also sporadically shutting off mobile internet access to test a so-called “white list” of state-approved websites and apps that includes Max.

VK says Max now has 100 million registered users, a figure that is impossible to verify. The app is being used to confirm the drinking age of users at supermarkets, book doctors’ appointments and enter museums. The country’s top universities require it to access their Wi-Fi network. VK says Max will soon integrate so many services that it can stand in for the internet itself.

‘CIA project’

The rise of Max is the culmination of a yearslong tug of war between the Kremlin and foreign tech giants. The World Wide Web emerged just as the Soviet Union was collapsing. Russia sought to lure investment, taking advantage of a decade of relative freedom. Google executives toured Russian startups looking for acquisitions well into the 2000s.

But the dalliance frayed after widespread antigovernment protests in 2011 drew the Kremlin’s attention to the reach of blogs and social-media platforms that opposition leaders like Alexei Navalny used to rally supporters and expose corruption.

When former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden fled to Russia in 2013 after leaking a trove of classified documents that shed light on the reach of U.S. surveillance, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the internet a “CIA project.” He promised to protect Russians from the influence of Western tech.

“For everyone in the world, it was clear the Americans are very powerful when it comes to surveillance of digital communications systems,” said Alena Epifanova, an expert on Russia’s internet at the German Council on Foreign Relations. “The Russians said: look, they’re all spying on us, so we need our own infrastructure, our own internet.”

But Russia had in many ways missed the boat. Unlike China, it had failed to institute a sweeping censorship system when the internet was in its infancy. Russia’s security services complained that citizens’ data was being stored beyond their reach by companies based abroad.

The Kremlin’s initial efforts to replace foreign platforms with homegrown equivalents were hamfisted. A Russian mobile operating system failed to get off the ground, as did a “patriotic” search engine that yielded only news items aligned with the government. A smartphone maker went bankrupt.

It was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 that supercharged its efforts to plug gaps in the descending digital iron curtain. Moscow quickly shut off access to platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Russians moved to VPN services and flocked to the two remaining messaging apps providing broad access to independent news: Telegram and WhatsApp.

Enter Max

What Russia didn’t have at the time was a viable alternative. That all changed in March of last year when VK announced the launch of Max.

In a meeting with business leaders that month, Putin said foreign IT companies still operating in Russia must be squeezed out. “We need to strangle them,” he said. His government began blocking WhatsApp and Telegram, citing their use by scammers and terrorists and alleging that they are violating Russian laws.

That decision helped pave the way for Max. The app started being promoted on billboards, government websites, TV commercials and by celebrities. Russian rapper Yegor Krid dialed a friend as he relaxed on a floating dinghy in a music clip released last year. “Bro, imagine, Max works even at sea,” he said. Influencer Artemy Lebedev praised Max for not permitting “khokhols,” a slur for Ukrainians.

The app’s interface closely resembles Telegram—launched by Dubai-based Russian billionaire Pavel Durov—down to the font and the small icons displayed behind each post and message. Like WeChat, Max’s developers said the app would soon add a payments system and integrate games, shopping, food delivery and healthcare services.

“The dream is to create a sort of Big Brother app, without which a citizen cannot fully function as a citizen,” said Lev Gershenzon, the former head of news at Russian tech company Yandex who now runs a startup in Berlin.

VK declined to comment. An email sent to the app’s developers returned an automatic response with a download link for Max.

But many Russians are nevertheless holding out, opposing a Max mandate in schools and state institutions, and saying they don’t trust the app to safeguard their privacy. At Tyumen University in Siberia, some 2,000 students signed a petition against a move to make the school’s Wi-Fi accessible only through Max.

One teacher in southern Russia said she tried refusing to use the app but has found it impossible to coordinate students without it. “Class materials, homework assignments, everything is on Max now,” she said.

The teacher said that when Ukraine attacked her city with drones early one morning, parents were informed over Max that classes had been canceled for the day. The teacher had to personally call the parents who had refused to download the app.

A worker at a nongovernmental organization in Yekaterinburg said a debate among residents of her apartment block about migrating their chat group to Max grew heated when a majority opposed it for data-privacy reasons. She said everyday issues, such as disputes over parking spaces, are still being discussed on a WhatsApp chat using VPN.

In rare criticism of the government from pro-Kremlin media, a Russian tabloid this week published an article criticizing state efforts to police the internet. “Either they see us as small children incapable of having things explained to them, or they believe such explanation is beneath them,” it said.

Business leaders have also privately complained that migrating all online services onto Max risks stifling innovation and limiting Russia’s ability to compete with China and the U.S. It may set an example for other strongmen too: Max is now available for download in dozens of countries allied with Moscow.

“Russia has chosen the sort of brute force, blunt instrument approach which may offer control that it seeks and ways to forcibly shut down communications,” said Webb. “There’s no way this doesn’t hinder progress on 21st-century technologies.”

Efforts to foist Max on people and ban alternatives have also provoked anger from Putin’s key voter base: the front-line soldiers fighting his war in Ukraine, who use Telegram for crucial battlefield communication.

One soldier invoked a Bible passage in a video message in February, warning of the consequences. “He who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind,” he said. Moscow has since granted soldiers a temporary waiver to continue using Telegram.

Write to Matthew Luxmoore at matthew.luxmoore@wsj.com