* Internet crackdown is causing frustration ahead of

September election

* More Russians are downloading VPN services

* Some divide their digital lives between two phones

* Authorities have softened their rhetoric on bans

By Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW, June 13 (Reuters) - In a quiet cafe popular for its

free Wi-Fi and good coffee, a Russian interior designer logs

onto a virtual private network so she can chat with friends

abroad using the U.S. messaging service WhatsApp, which is

blocked inside Russia.

Later, she toggles off the VPN to buy a ticket on the

Russian Railways website, which bars anyone using the tools to

obscure their location. She then picks up a second phone to

check for messages from clients on the state-controlled app MAX.

Since the Kremlin ratcheted up control over the internet this

year, Russians have been turning to increasingly convoluted

technical solutions to circumvent state monitoring and

restrictions on popular foreign apps like Meta Platforms' ( META )

WhatsApp and the Telegram messenger.

The biggest crackdown of its kind under President Vladimir Putin

has at times disrupted banking, transport and e-commerce,

irritating people ahead of a September parliamentary election,

according to statements from Kremlin-friendly opposition

parties, prominent bloggers and business leaders. Even some

social media influencers, who usually stay clear of politics,

criticized the restrictions.

Frustration over the curbs - together with rising prices, tax

hikes and war fatigue - is widely believed to have contributed

to Putin's falling approval ratings, which dropped from 75.1% in

February to 65.6% in April, according to state pollster VTsIOM,

their lowest level since he launched the all-out conflict in

Ukraine in 2022. They now stand at nearly 67%.

Officials have been pushing Russians to use state-backed

alternatives to foreign apps and websites in a drive for

"digital sovereignty". But some users are wary following

warnings from Kremlin critics and some Western tech companies

that MAX could be used to track them, which technology giant VK,

its owner, denies.

Quarantining the app on a second phone feels safer, said

Irina, the 41-year-old interior designer.

"Of course this is all a huge pain in the backside, but what

else can we do?" she said, asking to be identified by one name

due to the sensitivity of the matter. "You get used to it and

spend your days turning VPNs on and off, toggling between

different messengers and switching between different virtual

countries or phones to use the apps and websites you need."

VPN DOWNLOADS SURGE

VPNs work by routing a user's internet connection through

private servers outside Russia. In March alone, there were 9.2

million downloads of the five most popular VPN services from the

Google Play store, 14 times more than the same month last year,

the Russian daily newspaper Kommersant reported, citing data

from Digital Budget, a Moscow-based consultancy that tracks

online behavior.

"We've never seen this kind of take-up rate before," said

Sarkis Darbinyan, a Russian internet freedom activist based in

Lisbon.

Moscow has designated Darbinyan a "foreign agent," a term it

applies to people it views as engaged in anti-Russian activity.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said repeatedly that

internet controls are necessary when Russia is locked in what

officials cast as an existential clash with the West over

Ukraine. But Putin instructed the government in April to tread

more softly, telling lawmakers it was "counterproductive" to

"focus solely on bans and restrictions."

Government officials did not respond to questions for this

article.

While many authoritarian countries impose strict limits on

internet use, Russians had grown accustomed to a degree of

online freedom. Security services have long sought to silence

domestic critics, but authorities rarely interfered with

people's ability to use foreign apps or access Western media

content before the Ukraine war.

Since last year, the FSB security service, successor to the

Soviet-era KGB, has been ordering telecom companies to shut down

the mobile internet for days at a time in regions across Russia,

saying Ukrainian attack drones can use it to aid navigation.

Authorities have also been blocking or slowing connections

to a growing list of apps and websites, which state

communications regulator Roskomnadzor alleges are platforms for

illegal and extremist content.

WhatsApp and Telegram have accused Russia of trying to force

people to use less secure, government-mandated apps.

The disruptions intensified in March with a nearly three-week

outage in Moscow, upsetting senior bureaucrats who need the

internet and Telegram to corral votes for the ruling United

Russia party, according to two sources close to the Kremlin and

some analysts.

"The issue is not whether the regime will be able to secure

the outcome it wants (it will), but whether the electoral

process will be a smooth one," Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior

fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, wrote in April.

Even loyal government officials download VPNs and carry

multiple phones to keep government-backed apps like MAX separate

from the rest of their digital lives, the sources told Reuters.

Some also remove the microphone and camera from devices with

MAX installed in case the FSB can access them, one source said.

"Even if you're not up to any mischief, nobody wants the FSB

reading your messages," the source said.

'GAME OF CAT AND MOUSE'

Putin's special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, does not try to hide

his VPN use, posting regularly on X, which cannot be accessed

inside Russia without one.

While it is not illegal to use VPNs, Roskomnadzor has restricted

access to hundreds of them, setting up a game ⁠of ​cat and mouse

with users who must keep downloading new services to access

content they want.

In April, government offices, banks and major online

retailers - acting on the regulator's instructions - started

preventing people with a VPN enabled from accessing their sites.

The move coincided with a 10% drop in internet traffic for

Wildberries, Russia's Amazon equivalent, according to Digital

Budget.

"As market participants note, many users do not switch off

their VPN to access the site and simply lose interest in making

a purchase if they cannot open the product page," Digital Budget

said in a Telegram post.

The percentage of Russians who acknowledge using a VPN

increased from 23% in 2022 to 36% this year, according to the

Levada Center, a non-government pollster that is on Moscow's

foreign agent list.

Younger, tech-savvy adults will sometimes buy VPN

subscriptions for their parents or set up their own

custom-designed VPNs. But many Russians prefer to use apps and

websites that work without them.

MAX, which launched last year, has over 85 million daily

users, its owner said in May.

Interviewed by Reuters TV near Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre,

half a dozen office workers and passers-by offered a snapshot of

public opinion. Half expressed irritation with the digital

environment; others said they had adapted and didn't use VPNs.

"Most Russians simply do not see the need to go to any extra

trouble - what is readily available is quite sufficient for

them," Levada's director, Denis Volkov, wrote in April.

When navigation apps stopped working in Moscow in March,

delivery drivers for Flowwow, an online flower and gift

marketplace, used vendors' Wi-Fi connections to download

directions to customers' addresses, said Yuri Semichastnov, the

site's logistics head.

Sales of paper maps more than doubled in the capital during

the shutdown, according to Wildberries data.

With frustration building, the Kremlin softened its rhetoric in

recent weeks, assuring the public that the mobile internet

shutdowns are temporary.

A plan to have mobile service providers charge customers

extra for using more than 15 gigabytes of foreign data in a

month was postponed in May, Russian media reported, saying the

requirement targeting VPN users would probably be introduced

after the election.

Putin has also asked the government and FSB to work together

to ensure critical services like healthcare platforms and online

payment systems remain operational.

Irina, the interior designer, is not expecting her digital

life to get easier anytime soon, though.

"In Russia, we have a saying: Nothing is more permanent than

the temporary," she said.