Over the past year, Russian authorities have been blocking popular messaging apps and coercing citizens to migrate to Max, a new state-endorsed messenger platform. The messages there are presumed to be fully accessible to the F.S.B., the state security agency that succeeded the Soviet K.G.B. A recent joke from a comedy show on Channel One, Russian television’s largest outlet, went like this:

“Why are you writing to me in a private chat: ‘Hey everyone!’?” “Well, that’s how it works on Max!”

That such a joke aired on Channel One — a significant stake of which belongs to Yury Kovalchuk, who also has strong ties to Max and who is a friend of President Vladimir Putin’s — speaks to the animosity the people of Russia have toward the new app.

Usually the Kremlin faces dissent only from the small, liberal, perpetually-opposed-to-Putin part of society. But the state’s latest policies — blocking the internet on people’s phones, social media and internet messaging apps and running pro-Max programming around the clock on many other broadcasts on Channel One — are generating criticism among the core of people who favored the war against Ukraine. Exacerbating frustrations at the rising costs of the war — in mid-May, Moscow was hit by a record-breaking Ukrainian drone attack — these internet restrictions have left everybody angry, and the rage is boiling over.

Mr. Putin and his cronies have been trying to restrict Russians’ access to the internet for a long time. The bans are always carried out using the same playbook: While denying people access to a service, the authorities offer them a Russian alternative, owned by people close to the Kremlin. If you can’t use Facebook, just use VK, whose chief executive is the son of Mr. Putin’s curator of domestic policy. If you can’t use YouTube, just use VK Video. These transfers are actively encouraged by the state-controlled media, which loudly accuse Western services of not complying with Russian law.

Only opponents of the regime were sounding the alarm when the government blocked independent media and platforms such as Twitter, popular mostly among urban freethinkers. Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, however, the restrictions have grown much tighter. Now, most international social media platforms with audiences of tens of millions are blocked or slowed down: Facebook and Instagram in 2022, YouTube in 2024 and, most recently, Telegram in 2025.

Restricting Telegram seems to have been a bridge too far for many Russians. Telegram, which combines private messaging and news channels, had essentially become the top Russian media app for both services. After the invasion of Ukraine, the audiences of pro-war Telegram channels grew to millions of users, and the channels became a central means of communication for Russian soldiers at the front line.

Today, the pro-war audience is not happy. In their posts, members are even using the word “grandpa,” a derogatory nickname for Mr. Putin that was previously used mainly by the opposition. It refers not only to his age, 73, but to his relationship with modern technology. The Russian president does not use a smartphone, and only watches television and reads written news reports.

Why have Russians taken the banning of Telegram so personally? Being cut off from both Telegram and WhatsApp seems to have broken the social contract that people made with Mr. Putin’s regime many years ago: As long as the people stay out of politics, the Kremlin will stay out of people’s private lives. Many in Russia viewed the deal as affording a degree of material comfort in exchange for their political loyalty.

For the modern world, unfettered internet access is just as important as a good car or new clothes. Only the Kremlin’s grandpas, who don’t use the internet themselves, seem not to understand that. Along with the app bans, there have been frequent internet shutdowns in the past year across the country. When a shutdown happens, you can gain access only to sites on the so-called white list, the collection of websites and services preapproved by the government.

The official reason for the shutdowns is to minimize the consequences of Ukrainian drone attacks. In practice, they have had no effect on the attacks’ success; one recent wave in March managed to briefly disrupt ports on the Baltic Sea, through which up to half of Russia’s oil exports pass. Many Russians believe that this is a part of the state’s bigger strategy of building a sovereign internet, a corner of cyberspace completely controlled by the Russian state. They also suspect that such internet shutdowns will eventually become the norm. In some regions, especially those near the border with Ukraine, they already have.

Many people are resisting silently, installing V.P.N. services — tools that redirect a user’s traffic through foreign servers and help bypass restrictions. V.P.N. usage in Russia is ubiquitous, with some estimating that roughly 60 million Russians are familiar with V.P.N.s and that around 40 percent of internet users rely on one. Lately, the Kremlin has begun making attempts to suppress these efforts, too: The Russian authorities are putting pressure on Apple to remove V.P.N. apps from the Russian app store and are investing nearly $300 million with the goal of blocking 92 percent of V.P.N. apps by 2030.

Does all of this mean Russians will take to the streets to protest the shutdowns? It’s unlikely, though at least one demonstration, led by young people, did take place in Moscow at the end of March. The authorities responded in their usual way, with repression. Some of the organizers hastily emigrated. Others were arrested.

Still, the fact remains that the Kremlin has broken a longstanding compact with the Russian people. Only a grandpa like Mr. Putin could fail to see that in destroying what remained of a relatively free internet, he was destroying a central foundation of his own power.