Russia’s most powerful big-business lobby has declared Skype, the telecoms group that offers free calls over the internet, a threat to national security and is working with the government to regulate it.

Leading Russian telecommunications executives told Russia’s Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs this week that rapid growth in free voice over internet protocol (VoIP) services such as Skype threatened domestic companies’ profits and could undermine security because VoIP services are more difficult for security services to intercept.