Russia: WhatsApp alternative must soon be pre-installed on mobile devices

The Russian leadership wants to force WhatsApp out of the country. The preferred alternative called MAX must now be pre-installed on all mobile devices.

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Aug 21, 2025 at 9:05 pm CEST

2 min. read

By

Martin Holland

The Russian government has ordered that the state-sponsored messenger MAX must be pre-installed on all smartphones and tablets sold from next month. This was reported by the news agency Reuters. The move comes just one week after calls with the foreign messenger services WhatsApp and Telegram were restricted in Russia. In addition, the government has ordered that the Russian app store RuStore must also be pre-installed on Apple devices from September. From January, an app for Russian state television channels is also to be pre-installed on all smart TVs.

Explosive growth in Russia

The order is the next step in getting the Russian population to stop communicating via WhatsApp. In mid-June, the deputy chairman of the Duma Committee on Information Policy declared that "it is time for WhatsApp to prepare to leave the Russian market". Like Facebook and Instagram, WhatsApp belongs to the US company Meta, which refuses to share data with Russian authorities. In addition, since the escalation of the war of aggression against Ukraine in early 2022, the leadership in Moscow has continued to expand its control over the Russian part of the internet, coupled with ever stricter censorship.

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It was only in June that the Russian parliament passed a law to create its own messenger. It was said at the time that state services would also be integrated into this chat program. MAX is now set to become the standard in Russia. The messenger has only been around since the end of March and is available for the most common mobile and desktop operating systems. After the service is said to have had one million users in June and twice as many a month later, it now has 18 million, according to the Russian news agency Interfax. The most active users are those from the metropolitan areas of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Samara, Krasnodar, Yekaterinburg and Kazan. Since March, 200 million messages have been sent via the service, i.e. just over 10 per person.