Russian Signal users report that the service works fine when accessed through a VPN or when using the built-in censorship-circumvention mode.

Russia’s state communications regulator Roskomnadzor said the encrypted messaging app Signal has been blocked in the country for violating laws related to counterterrorism operations, the Interfax news agency reported on Friday.

“Access to the Signal messaging app has been blocked due to violations of the requirements of Russian law that must be observed to prevent the use of messaging apps for terrorist and extremist purposes,” Interfax news agency quoted the news agency as saying.

Before the Federal Communications Regulatory Service announced the measures , hundreds of Signal users had reported glitches in the messenger app, a secure communication tool used by up to one million Russians to encrypt messages and conversations.

An internet service monitoring site has received more than 1,500 complaints about Signal, mostly from users in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but users have reported that it works fine when accessed through a VPN or when used in its built-in censorship-circumvention mode.

“This clearly indicates that Messenger is blocked in Russia and not a technical problem on the Signal side,” Mikhail Klimarev , creator of the Telegram channel “For Telecom,” told Reuters.

Signal did not respond to a request for comment.

Three people in Moscow and Krasnodar Krai told Reuters that without a VPN it was even impossible to register a new account on Signal: After entering their mobile phone number, the service displayed the message “server error.”

Klimarev said this was the first attempt to block the signal in Russia.

Russian authorities began blocking access to the widely used messaging app Telegram in 2018. The move disrupted many third-party services but had little impact on Telegram’s availability in Russia.

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