Russia threatened Zuma with a blockade because he is restricting the Russian public sector's access to its services

Russian authorities today issued a warning to the American video conferencing platform Zoom, claiming that it has stopped selling its services to the Russian public sector, government, public companies and universities.

"If Zum makes such decisions regarding government services and public companies, then it is possible that that service will be blocked on the territory of our country, as a reciprocal and symmetrical measure," said Alexander Bashkin, a member of the Federation Council, the upper house of the Parliament, reports the Russian agency Ria .

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov criticized Zoom today for such an approach and called for the development of alternative Russian platforms.

"Russian public institutions, institutions of higher education are prevented from extending their contracts" with that company, Peskov said at his regular press conference, expressing "regret and incomprehension" for such an action.

"We need to switch to alternatives, they exist. Our operators of similar platforms should work on completing their services," Peskov said, adding that President Vladimir Putin does not use Zum.

The Russian daily Komersant writes today about a letter by which Zum to its Russian distributor revoked the right to sell software to government departments and organizations associated with them.

The authenticity of the letter was confirmed for the newspaper by Andrej Petrenko, the head of distributor Rejtkonf, but stating that the previous contracts remain in force and that the new decision refers to nine former Soviet republics from the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Others have also criticized Zoom for the decision, arguing that Russia can do without the app, even though it has become very popular especially due to restrictions during the pandemic and remote working and teaching.

The Russian Minister of Education, Sergei Kravtsov, said that Russia recently had its own "Sferum" software and that it is therefore "ready for any situation", and that "the educational system does not depend on any particular software", he said, reports the TASS agency. .

The state nuclear energy agency Rosatom told the RIA news agency that the sector of Russian industry uses its own internal closed communications platform.

Experts told Russian media that Zum may have decided to limit its operations in Russia out of fear that it could be hit by US sanctions against Moscow.

In late 2020, Microsoft refused to sell software to a Russian university under US sanctions for training weapons experts.