Over the past few days, the Telegram channel of iStories (Vazhnyye Istorii) gained 10,000 subscribers. "The statistics show that this is not organic growth," the outlet's journalists wrote. The overwhelming majority of the new subscribers are inactive accounts without photographs and with generated names.
TV Rain, Novaya Gazeta, Ostorozhno Novosti, Astra and Meduza saw similarly sharp increases. According to Novaya Gazeta, more than 10,000 users subscribed to its channel in a single day. Politician Boris Nadezhdin, the channel of media manager Ksenia Sobchak, Krovavaya Barynya, the outlet Kod.ru and the Insider project also complained of follower inflation.
The mass influx of empty accounts has been reported not only by independent outlets but also by pro-Kremlin media. The RT na Russkom television channel described the new subscribers as people "without photos, stories or signs of a real human being." Follower inflation has also been observed on the Telegram channel of presenter Vladimir Solovyov.
What is behind the sharp rise in subscribers is unclear. TV Rain suggested the inflation "could become grounds for mass complaints against the channel in order to secure its blocking," and linked it to the upcoming State Duma elections. Novaya Gazeta also linked the attack to the elections.
Experts from the Setevyye Svobody (Network Freedoms) project advise administrators to treat such a surge as part of preparations for an attack — for example, a subsequent barrage of complaints or a simulation of Telegram rule violations that could lead to automatic blocking. According to the project, this exact scheme — mass follower inflation followed by a stream of complaints — is increasingly used to force Telegram to block an undesirable channel and to let a project close to Russian structures take over the vacated address.
The simultaneous inflation of several independent channels with different topics and different audiences indicates, according to Setevyye Svobody, a coordinated campaign rather than a coincidence or a random malfunction of Telegram's algorithms. An attack similar in mechanics has already been used against projects previously added in Russia to the registers of "foreign agents" and "undesirable organizations," which allows the project to link the current wave to attempts by the authorities to purge Telegram of sources of information beyond their control.
iStories recalled that it had already faced a similar influx after it published an investigation into a network selling sexual services involving minors, in which billionaire Oleg Deripaska was mentioned as one of the clients.
In April 2025, Telegram deleted the VChK-OGPU channel, which had more than a million subscribers, and its vacated address was almost immediately taken over by a channel linked to Russian structures. At the time, the messenger's administration attributed the deletion to "unauthorized access" to the account, although BBC sources denied that version. At the same time as VChK-OGPU, at least seven other channels disappeared, including ones that wrote about the situation in the Kursk region.
Sources differ: TV Rain and Novaya Gazeta link the attack to the upcoming State Duma elections, whereas iStories and The Insider do not directly name the elections as the cause and view the follower inflation as possible preparation for blocking through mass complaints. RT na Russkom reported the inflation without specifying causes, as it did in the case of Vladimir Solovyov's channel.