Russia Tightens VPN Blocking After State Duma Elections as Providers Report Outages

Among the affected services, one reported that its team replaced eight servers in five days, while two others had all of their international server locations and IP addresses blocked outright by Roskomnadzor, the state communications regulator. The outages left users of the affected providers searching for working connections.

Alexey Kozlyuk, chairman of the VPN Guild, told Meduza that while the restrictions are severe, the organization does not treat the election-timed blocks as a fundamentally new wave. He said the pressure began to mount in early August and that the current situation is a continuation and gradual intensification of that campaign.

A spokeswoman for Amnezia VPN told TechRadar that the new blocks were not surprising. "In Russia, VPNs face pressure almost every month; it is a new norm," she said. Amnezia itself was not affected by this round, the company said, because it rebuilt its server infrastructure and updated its protocol to be more resistant to censorship following the events of June.

That June assault crippled Amnezia's network and took the company six weeks to restore fully. After the attack, Amnezia restored premium service in Russia and revised its anti-censorship protocols as the state's anti-VPN measures intensified.

A report by Human Rights Watch describes a shift in official tactics from granular, targeted blocks to sweeping infrastructure attacks aimed at the underlying architecture of circumvention software. "The Russian government's escalating attacks on censorship circumvention services is part of its broader assault on access to information, privacy, and freedom of expression," said Hugh Williamson, the organization's Europe and Central Asia director. The methods cited include bulk blocking of entire IP subnets, phishing campaigns aimed at provider employees and distributed denial of service attacks.

Authorities have also turned to domestic technology. Earlier this year, the government directed major Russian internet companies to quietly log their users' VPN connections. A study by RKS Global confirmed that at least 30 domestic apps collected those IP addresses, which were fed back into the state's censorship apparatus and used to carry out the largest block of more than 20 popular VPNs to date.

The scale of the dependence on circumvention tools is considerable. An estimated 57 million people in Russia, roughly 40 percent of the population, use VPNs to reach independent news and blocked platforms such as Instagram and YouTube.

Alongside the technical blocking, authorities are pressing Apple and Google to remove circumvention tools from their app stores. Human Rights Watch reports that Apple removed 1,213 applications in response to Russian government requests in 2025, while Google was fined 22.8 million rubles in February 2026 for failing to remove VPNs from its Play Store. Several popular clients were removed from Apple's platform in March after Roskomnadzor said the apps included content that is illegal in Russia. Mobile payment gateways have also been cut off, leaving users and providers in a running contest over detection and evasion.

TechRadar said it had contacted Amnezia VPN and digital rights specialists at RKS Global for further comment on the current outages.

Editor's Summary

Russia blocked servers and IP addresses used by at least ten VPN providers in the week after its State Duma elections, with Roskomnadzor targeting international infrastructure. Industry representatives call the move an intensification of pressure dating to early August, while Human Rights Watch points to subnet blocking, phishing and DDoS attacks. An estimated 57 million Russians rely on circumvention tools, and Apple and Google face continued government demands to remove them from their app stores.