Andrew Osborne

And they've been trying to encourage people voluntarily to make that switch.

But of course, at the same time, they've been exerting this enormous pressure on foreign owned apps like WhatsApp.

And the other big one, of course, in Russia is Telegram, the Telegram app.

Critics say that Russia is increasingly moving in the direction of China, where the internet is very tightly controlled and there's less scope for freedom for citizens.

Russia says it's actually not doing that.

But yeah, what it means in practice is that if you are a Russian citizen and you want to use apps like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube...

You can only do that if you have access to a reliable VPN, a virtual private network.

And at the same time, Russia is clamping down on VPNs themselves.

So it's a game of cat and mouse, really.