Identity and Phones in the 'DNR'

A renewed push at russification, 'DNR'-style: this time, through people's phones

There is an important piece of news that Ukrainian and world media seem strangely to have passed by, which has however dominated local news from Donetsk over the past few days.

The ‘DNR’ (they hate it when you use inverted commas) has demanded that users of the Feniks (‘Phoenix’) mobile phone network verify their identity and all personal details.

I am still looking into all the details of this, so shall probably more fully as I learn more. The news concerns the ‘DNR’s’ Feniks mobile phone network, formally GUP DNR ROS (the DNR Republic Communications Operator State Unitary Enterprise), which was set up in 2015 to oversee and control the ‘DNR’s’ mobile telephone and Internet communications.

Feniks is controlled by the ‘DNR’, through the local ‘ministry for digital development’.

The ‘DNR’ authorities had started to announce earlier this year that Feniks planned to verify the user-details of its subscribers.

Image: Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported earlier this year that Feniks users can verify their details online. However, it seems that people have to fill in a form in person in order to go through the verification process

The official reason for this was to cut down on illegal SIM cards and telephone fraud.

Users have been told to verify their details, and have the option to undertake verification in Feniks offices, or online. However, it seems that many DNR residents have to fill in forms in person, in order to register for the online verification process.

There appears to have been much confusion over timelines given to users to verify. Initial reports claimed that people needed to sign up by 1 July 2025.

Cue massive queues that have sprung up over the past week or so. The queues have been the focus of news on local ‘official’ and nonofficial Telegram channels the past couple of weeks, and of much apparent discontent.

Image: Photo of a queue to register outside a Feniks office in Makiivka, Trinadtsatyi Telegram channel, 24 June

Image: Photo of a queue to register outside a Feniks office in Donetsk, Donetsk Z Telegram channel, 25 June

It seems that the ‘DNR’ authorities have now pushed back the timing—most likely because they did not want to appear to the Kremlin that they could not meet their deadlines, rather than relenting to public pressure (more on that below). Now the authorities have given people until 1 November 2025 to verify.

It seems that at that point, any unverified SIM cards will be switched off.

People appear annoyed. Technocratic control is one thing, but desperately frustrating when the technology does not work.

Image: ‘Feniks, f*cking work’, cartoon, Donetsk Z Telegram channel, 20 June

DNR rushes russification

Of course, there is more to this than just administration. Everything about the DNR is—very similar in this regard to Russia—is about control and coercion, and a strange mixture of technocrat authoritarianism (a dicdataship). You can in the DNR have up to 20 SIM cards, aligned with Russian law. All phone numbers are registered against names and addresses, enabling the authorities to access easily data and communications. And, of course, to register or verify a SIM, you need a passport: in this case, a Russian passport.

So it is another way to force people to sign up formally for Russian citizenship, along all the other ways the DNR is coercing people through a variety of technocratic or pragmatic or aggressive means to give in and succumb to russification.

Putting russification through people’s phones strikes at the heart of their identity. It also means that people will find it increasingly hard to access external news, read undesirable Telegram channels, download normal apps, or communicate in many cases with relatives in free Ukraine.

In addition, the authorities will know that the mobile phone is becoming a key part of individual identification, a moderator of relationships with the outside world and a crucial part of attachment. Striking at that strikes at ways to prise and shift identity and to russify.

Authorities signal increasing control of population

The supposed desire to clamp down on telephone scammers fits in with the wider strategy from Russia, where the federal powers are increasingly concerns about fraudulent phone calls, and also calls coming into Russia from other countries, especially Ukraine (there have been reports of Russians being pressured to undertake acts of sabotage through foreign phone calls—I can only reckon that that is excellent persuasion).

That’s one thing. However, there is something else, that goes back to people’s frustrations with their authorities:

The DNR authorities appear less concerned in their messaging about what locals think about life there, or the really poor services.

There was no apology in the tone of messaging about queues to verify or problems with Feniks registration, just factual and bureaucratic statements from ‘DNR head’ Denis Pushilin that he was examining information and would post more.

Such addresses come alongside other calls by Pushilin for people in the ‘DNR’ just to come to terms with life there, and get on with things. In his annual televised marathon a couple of days back, Pushilin said that people might be upset about the water situation in the ‘DNR’, but people just had to accept the realities of the situation and put up with it. (The water supply in the ‘DNR’ has been horrendous for months, with reports of people collecting water from puddles in the street and washing in the snow. Anyone who has been in Donetsk in the summer will know how hot it can get over the next couple of months.)

This lack of concern to the people marks to me a different tone from Pushilin—not that they were particularly concerned in any case to locals. The new fellness to me demonstrates—likely deliberately—that the authorities are stable and safe in power, that they realise that they are untouchable (at least from below), and that the locals can do nothing about it. They have been ensconced in power now for over a decade, with little challenge from the ‘DNR’ to their position.

This is highly worrying, and a likely sign that the ‘DNR’ authorities are currently highly secure in place. This is likely through a mixture of coercion, authoritarian fear, reflexive control, and cultural and other informational pressures. There is little way currently of undoing that easily, and the clampdown on the phones and Internet access will only reinforce this desperately sad situation.