On the morning of May 21, 2025, residents of the Lipetsk, Vladimir and Moscow regions faced interruptions in the work of mobile operators T2, Beeline and MTS, and in the Lipetsk region, the problems also affected MegaFon subscribers. This is evidenced by data from the Downdetector service, which recorded thousands of complaints from users. Lipetsk Region Governor Igor Artamonov explained the temporary shutdown of mobile Internet by security measures related to the operational situation, promising to restore access at the first opportunity. The incident became part of the increasingly frequent failures in cellular communications in border regions, causing concern among the population and questions about the causes.

According to Downdetector, in the Lipetsk region, the largest number of complaints were about Beeline (about 1200 in the morning) and T2 (about 900), with fewer reports of problems with MTS and MegaFon. In the Vladimir region, users reported outages mainly with MTS (about 800 complaints), and in the Moscow region, the outages affected T2 and Beeline (600-700 complaints each). Subscribers complained about the lack of mobile Internet, the inability to make calls and send messages. As reported by the Telegram channel Narodnye Novosti, in Lipetsk and Yelets, users noted the complete disappearance of the network for some operators, which caused difficulties with calling a taxi and accessing banking applications.

Governor Artamonov linked the shutdown of the Internet in the Lipetsk region to security measures in his Telegram channel, without specifying details. The restrictions may be related to the strengthening of measures against attacks by Ukrainian drones, which have become more frequent in the border regions. On the night of May 21, the Russian Defense Ministry reported the interception of 127 UAVs over 10 regions, including the Lipetsk region, where 16 drones were shot down. Similar incidents have previously been accompanied by temporary communication shutdowns to prevent coordination of attacks.