Russia’s state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said encrypted messaging app Signal had been blocked in the country for violating laws related to counter-terrorism operations, the Interfax news agency reported on Friday.

“Access to the Signal messaging app is blocked due to violations of the requirements of Russian legislation that must be complied with to prevent the use of messaging apps for terrorist and extremist purposes,” Interfax reported.

Before Roskomnadzor announced the action, hundreds of Signal users reported bugs in the Messenger app, a secure messaging tool used by about a million Russians to encrypt messages and conversations.

Internet service monitoring sites have found more than 1,500 complaints about Signal, mostly from users in Moscow and St. Petersburg. However, users reported that it worked normally when accessed via a VPN or when used in built-in censorship-bypassing mode.

“This indicates that the messenger is being blocked in Russia, and not a technical problem on Signal’s side,” Mikhail Klimarev, the author of the Telegram channel For Telecom, told Reuters.

Signal did not respond to a request for comment.

It was also impossible to register a new Signal account without a VPN, three people from Moscow and the Krasnodar region told Reuters. When you entered your mobile phone number, the service displayed a “server error” message.

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

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

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