On August 12, the occupation “authorities” in Crimea and Sevastopol began to simultaneously warn the population about the prospects of a “long-term shutdown of mobile Internet in the region”, citing the alleged “neutralization of cyber attacks” and “danger from Ukraine” as the reason.
These announcements, however, by “coincidence” coincided with interruptions in voice calls in messengers “Telegram” and “WhatsApp” noticed both on the occupied peninsula and in many regions of Russia itself, about which the aggressor authorities burst out with a whole series of contradictory statements, for example, declaring “measures to combat telephone fraud”.
As residents of the peninsula have been widely noting on social networks, all sorts of online scammers most often use regular voice calls and SMS messages, which the occupiers are calling for during periods of “anti-terrorist shutdowns of mobile Internet”.
Crimeans are almost unanimous in their opinions that the occupiers equally effectively control both messengers like “Telegram” and regular mobile communications.
Therefore, all references to the “fight against fraudsters” and to the “Ukrainian trace” are only a cover for the real goal of the current bans: to force the population of both the occupied territories and Russia to “use voice communication services”, the payment for which is significantly higher than for Internet traffic.
Whether the illegal “mobile operators” in the occupied territories will thus collect some “additional money to support the communications infrastructure” will be shown by further events.
