"I can hear it five hops away from Begovaya"
How Russian regions are developing innovative communication methods amid mobile internet outages
Meshtastic is a nearly fully-fledged DIY internet. You probably don't know about it, but right now it's running somewhere very close. And the growing number of blocked networks in Russia is only helping this technology spread. We'll tell you how enthusiasts deployed a new alternative network—literally "for fun"—and how they were surprised to discover they'd inadvertently committed an act of civil disobedience.
Author: Sergey Hyugge
We are publishing this story together with New Tab edition.
All names in the text have been changed at the request of the characters.
How it works
I first learned about Meshtastic from a video about setting up a connection without the internet. Then another video popped up in my recommendations feed. And another. At some point, when the mobile phone service in my city was out yet again, I ordered a node (i.e., a radio unit) on Aliexpress for 1,500 rubles. collected her (8 minutes), flashed (20 minutes), connected to a mobile device via Bluetooth (1 minute) and immersed myself in the amazing world of Meshtastic.
The node looks like something out of a retrofuturistic novel. It's a completely bare board, requiring you to screw the antenna onto it yourself and then assemble some kind of enclosure. You can either use a ready-made solution and order a 3D-printed part, or print it yourself, or even use materials you have on hand. I ordered a complete enclosure from Ozon for 300 rubles. It looks like a cool accessory that could compete with the many cool things on my rather cluttered desk.
Meshtastic, true to its name, operates on the principle of mesh networks. That is, it's a network consisting of multiple simple radio nodes, each of which transmits information along a chain. The number of nodes in a chain is, of course, limited. But even the technically feasible maximum of seven nodes (also known as "hops") is capable of completely covering a hypothetical metropolis the size of Moscow.
The Meshtastic enthusiasts I interviewed said they learned about the technology through word of mouth: from chats, friends, and so on. Most were drawn to the combination of its "newsroom vibe" and a certain "cyber-partisanship." For example, user Alex Cube said he was inspired to start Meshtastic by video From the YouTube channel "Physics by Pobedinsky." What Alex Cube values most about technology is the ability to communicate even when the mobile network is down, and outages in his region are becoming more and more frequent.
Variations of nodes and related accessories (antennas and other) exist A huge number. But the "entry ticket" to this technology is quite inexpensive: the simplest device will cost just one to two thousand rubles.
You can give your node absolutely any name—this opens up a lot of room for self-expression. Then, when you connect to the mobile app, a "Retrieving nodes" message appears, along with a rapidly increasing number. This is the number of nodes you can send messages to right now. You can immediately see both the devices you can message directly and the nodes accessible via hops. Another important point: radio connection quality is highly dependent on weather conditions. Rain or fog can significantly reduce the connection range.
The first thought when using Meshtastic is, "Good old, warm, tube-like internet is back." A device made in the best traditions retrowave, blinks a light and displays incredibly atmospheric technical messages about the work status on a microscopic screen - absolute vibes Fallout Group chats are vibrant, with people constantly posting messages like "test," "ping," and "can you hear me?" Weather bots regularly post in the chats, new nodes appear, and so on. The structure of these chats is the same across all regions: there are two well-known public channels (with and without bots), and then the channels become increasingly private and less obvious. This arrangement developed spontaneously, with the "with/without bots" distinction being as obvious and convenient as possible. You can monitor numerous regional chats on a dedicated platform. aggregator website.
In many large cities there are telegrams Group-mirrors where you can read messages from a single, shared on-air chat. But that's not the same experience!
From time to time, messages like "I can hear you five hops away from Begovaya" and "I got your message in four hops, too much. Two was enough before" appear in Meshtastic chats. People are surprised—and clearly very pleased—to explore this new layer of reality.
"The technology has been around in Russia for over four years and [until recently] was developing smoothly, but it was in the last six months that there was a huge demand for independent communications," explains Nikolai, one of the members of the community that promotes Meshtastic. "People are interested in alternative communications, even in a limited format like Meshtastic. We started working on it spontaneously. We've always been interested in radios, walkie-talkies, SDR receivers And so on, and then an interesting technology emerged that combines the analog essence of radio with digital. This combination results in a convenient device with the advantages of both worlds.
The growing popularity of mesh networks among Russians is confirmed by statistics. The number of subscribers in the Meshtastic Russia Telegram chat has almost doubled since October 2025, from five to nine thousand. Yandex was already recording around a thousand searches for "Meshtastic" per month in July 2025, and by November, the monthly number had exceeded 40. Similar trends for the "Meshtastic" search have been observed on Google since August.
Of course, Meshtastic is not just a Russian phenomenon, but a truly international one. On the global map https://meshmap.net/ You can see that almost all countries are covered by nodes, and there are practically no cities without nodes.
Communication in Meshtastic isn't always easy: messages aren't always sent, and sometimes they fail due to poor weather conditions, poor positioning, or a weak antenna. In these cases, you can simply view chats in read-only format.
"The maximum established communication range is 300+ kilometers, which is the officially registered network record. In practical terms, it can reach hundreds of kilometers, sometimes a little more. On average, in urban areas, you can get 20-30 kilometers with a well-established network," explains Nikolai, a member of the Russian Meshtastic community. "In my region, I can hear half of [my city of over a million people]. If someone in the city has good conditions (high node location, strong antenna), I'll most likely hear them. But they're unlikely to hear me."
Immediately after sending a message, you see the "Waiting to be acknowledged" status. Your node is attempting to relay the message to neighboring devices. There are two possible outcomes: either "Max Retransmission Reached" (failure—no one heard you) or "Acknowledged" (you were heard—the message successfully reached the airwaves).
So far, Meshtastic isn't perceived by authorities worldwide as something that requires special attention. In some countries, Meshtastic is nominally violates There are certain standards for frequencies and airtime, but, as technology enthusiasts explain, the authorities turn a blind eye to these regulations. Therefore, to get a fine from the supposed regulator for Meshtastic anywhere, you'd have to try really hard.
Russia also turns a blind eye to technology. At least for now.
"There's no point in opening this topic."
The Russian Meshtastic community emerged and began growing rapidly about a year ago. It was then that large networks emerged in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and then in the regions. The all-Russian Telegram group Meshtastic Russia is currently composed about 9 thousand people, and their own local chats offers in almost every Russian region.
We asked Meshtastic enthusiasts to articulate what exactly attracts them to this technology today.
"I'd call it amateur radio for zoomers, since it's a minimum of analog and a maximum of digital. You're practically on your smartphone all the time, texting. You could call it a kind of rebirth of radio technology," says Nikolai, one of the Meshtastic enthusiasts.
Another fan of this technology is Mikhail, a programmer and radio enthusiast who also develops software. A few years ago, he purchased a couple of nodes on Aliexpress, connected them into a single channel, and tested them:
"It was cool! You can communicate via text with someone over a fairly short distance. It's like launching a paper airplane at the neighbor's house without having access to the roof—our roofs are triple-locked."
He then discovered that the network's technical setup in his region differed from the unofficial all-Russian Meshtastic standard. It featured atypical channel names, as well as a forced amateur radio mode that disables encryption and sends telemetry once every 10 minutes.
Mikhail began suggesting ways to improve the network in the chat, but quickly realized that local users were extremely afraid to change anything. According to him, this conservatism stems from a fear of "what if something goes wrong." And that's precisely why the enthusiasts made the network as technically unconventional as possible, hoping this move would protect them from government scrutiny.
The number of Meshtastic searches in Yandex and Google has been growing in recent months, as has the frequency of mobile internet outages in the regions.
I've spoken to a number of Meshtastic enthusiasts, but they all flatly refused to speak under their names.
"The more you and your colleagues write about this—especially with the desire to ride the wave of relevance, gain popularity, significance, and increase subscriber numbers—the faster Roskomnadzor will take notice, restrict, ban, and even harass some. Your desire to highlight this phenomenon is yet another attempt to put the nail in the coffin of this technology," Alexander, one of the Meshtastic enthusiasts, responded to my inquiry.
Many community members explain that the community is "both active and anonymous, so there aren't any particularly prominent figures," since "if something happens," few people would want to be a public figure in Russia, clearly associated with Meshtastic.
Interestingly, the technology itself doesn't provide any anonymity at all—and the physical location of a specific node is very easy to track. There is encryption, but not the kind that intelligence agencies can't break. So, you don't even need to "track" anyone by IP: everything has already been tracked.
Drin Technologies
The very idea of Meshtastic suggests a lot of scope for experiments, various kinds of improvements and modding his own nodes. For example, enthusiast Alex Cube assembled a setup consisting of a Heltec V3 wearable node and another node, a homemade, stationary one. For the antenna, he used a ready-made solution, buying a regular antenna rod from Ozon.
The Alex Cube stationary device was placed in a homemade sealed box and connected via cable—this avoids battery problems due to temperature fluctuations.
"Currently, I can receive messages from the city and send messages myself, but the latter only requires me to lean out the window with a three-meter collapsible pole," explains Alex Cube. "We don't have a full-fledged connection yet, but the potential for it is obvious. Most of my experience is a series of experiments, often unsuccessful, with homemade antennas and raising them to altitude. But each test yields new insights and brings us closer to a stable system."
Mikhail, an enthusiast from another region, assembled a setup consisting of a Moxon antenna, which he made himself from a 3D-printed part and a piece of copper wire, and a Heltec node ordered from China. After properly configuring this setup, he was able to establish a connection with a friend who lives on the other side of a large Russian city.
"Even though it's quite unstable, it's pretty cool to have such a backup during complete mobile internet outages and electronic warfare," explains the Meshtastic enthusiast. "A friend is planning to set up this method of communication with his elderly parents. The network is completely vulnerable to targeted jamming, but it works just fine without power and when there are no other means of communication."
The technology continues to evolve—Meshtastic has many growth opportunities. This includes simply increasing the number of nodes to make the network more stable, as well as developing competing projects (Meshcore and others) to squeeze the maximum reliability and speed out of the technology.
"The potential is truly enormous. You can't build a full-fledged internet with this technology, but achieving stable data transmission is entirely possible, and I believe this is the future," says Nikolai, a technology promoter in Russia. However, interim solutions for integrating Meshtastic and a "full-fledged internet" already exist.
If you connect a node to an external network (this is possible) and configure it correctly, you can establish communication between any point on the planet. In this format, nodes can exchange information and relay data over the internet. But most people don't do this: most are simply too lazy; they already have internet access, and the wow factor of "local chat on the airwaves" is enough.
Nevertheless, most technology enthusiasts at some point yearn to improve connection quality. This is spurred on by the tiny antenna included with the standard kit, which seems to say, "Buy something more substantial." Users generally agree that standard antennas for 200-300 rubles from AliExpress offer the most effective improvements in connection stability and range. "After all, a lot in mesh networks depends on the installation altitude of the device," explains Nikolai. "Even the cheapest antenna can reach other devices hundreds of kilometers away, if you're at a very high altitude."
A nice thing "just in case"
Mikhail, one of the enthusiasts, says he keeps a node "just in case"—as something that might help at some point in the future: "The network is still a very unreliable means of communication. I personally don't use it for everyday tasks, except for tests and pings. And I only have one other person on it."
He recalls that at one point, there was no one on the network at all, but now there are 190 nodes, including several within direct line of sight. "Now, if one person disconnects a device, others will remain," explains the Meshtastic enthusiast. "In other words, the more participants, the more stable the connection and the greater the coverage."
"At some point, it's possible that Meshtastic density in many cities across the country will reach such levels that a message will be delivered with almost 100% certainty," explains Evgeny, another Meshtastic community member. "And only then will users need to worry about government attention. On the other hand, the government is already doing everything it can to address this as quickly as possible."
It seems Meshtastic has met several public needs at once: it's something real, something you can hold in your hands, and something you control 100%. It's technology without "black boxes," with the whole process literally right before your eyes. It's also the ability to stay connected, regardless of the wishes of the state and its regulators.
Meshtastic is an additional layer of reality, always alive and tangible: here it is on your desktop, blinking its lights encouragingly at you. It's both a pleasant and useful thing, good to have just in case, as the technology is currently completely impervious to blocking.
I want to turn on Noda from time to time, check my chats, and receive reassuring notifications about new messages and status changes on other devices. Sometimes I open a map and am amazed at how many people keep their devices turned on and set to send messages. It's a very therapeutic feeling to know I'm not alone.
