MOSCOW, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Russian users of Telegram and

WhatsApp had trouble accessing the messaging apps on Wednesday

due to disruption the state communications monitoring service

said was caused by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS)

attack.

The service said the attack had been repelled and that the

messaging networks were working normally again. Russian media

said other sites, including Wikipedia, Skype and the social

media platform Discord had also been affected.

"The disruption is related to a DDoS attack on Russian

telecom operators," the service said in a statement, without

saying who might have been responsible.

Wednesday's disruption to the messaging apps, which are

widely popular in Russia, came weeks after Russian internet

monitoring services reported a mass outage on the availability

of video hosting site YouTube as Russian authorities step up

criticism of the platform.

Hundreds of Russian users of Signal reported glitches with

the secure messenger app earlier this month.

Russia began to block access to Telegram in 2018. The action

interrupted many third-party services, but had little effect on

the availability of Telegram there.

WhatsApp's parent company Meta Platforms Inc ( META ) was branded an

"extremist" organisation by Moscow in 2022 and other Meta

services - Facebook and Instagram - are now banned in Russia,

but can still be accessed using virtual private networks (VPNs).