Zhang Yong, CEO of China's e-commerce giant Alibaba, addresses the Alibaba Annual Party celebrating the 18th anniversary of the Alibaba Group in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, Sept. 8, 2017.
MOSCOW, May 13 (Xinhua) -- Russia's telecommunications watchdog Roskomnadzor said Sunday that it had unlocked a subnet of China's e-commerce giant Alibaba earlier implicated in an extensive blocking against Telegram messenger.
"As part of a set of measures to enforce the court decision regarding Telegram, Roskomnadzor unlocked a subnet of Alibaba (around 8,200 IP addresses)," Roskomnadzor said in a statement.
The move was to ensure the stable operation of third-party Internet resources, it said.
Meanwhile, the regulator said that Telegram's IP addresses incorporated in this subnet have been identified and continued to be blocked, adding that it would keep on monitoring the use of the unblocked networks by the messenger.
On April 13, Moscow's Tagansky District Court granted Roskomnadzor's demand to block access to Telegram in Russia due to its refusal to provide user data.
Russian security services have been demanding access to messages on Telegram on the suspicion that it was used to organize terrorist activities, but the latter refused to comply, citing privacy laws.
Launched in 2013, Telegram is now among the world's most popular messaging applications, with 200 million users around the world.