Russia to Double 2027 Internet Censorship Budget, Weighs VPN Traffic Fee

The spending increase centers on the Automated System for Ensuring the Security of the Internet, known as ASBI. The system controls specialized hardware called TSPU, which internet service providers are legally required to install. Those devices filter network traffic and allow the state to throttle or block unauthorized websites and VPN protocols. Russia originally planned to spend 9.87 billion rubles, about $115 million, on ASBI in 2027. The new proposal revealed by Verstka and corroborated by The Moscow Times raises that figure to 19.87 billion rubles, according to TechRadar. Overall funding for Roskomnadzor, the federal censor, is set to grow by 60 percent in 2027.

The money is intended to expand the system's capacity. Roskomnadzor has been tasked with reaching a 92 percent efficiency rate in blocking VPNs by 2030 and increasing ASBI's throughput by 2.5 times to handle 954 Tbit/s of data, TechRadar reported.

Alongside hardware upgrades, the Ministry of Digital Development is exploring financial deterrents. Kommersant reported that the government is discussing a new fee for users who consume more than 50 GB of international traffic on 5G networks. Telecom operators currently lack the technical ability to separate 5G and LTE international traffic in real time, but TechRadar reported that the intent is to penalize users who route traffic outside the country through VPNs.

A new legislative package called 'Anti-Fraud 3.0' would also target domestic infrastructure providers. Under the rules, Russian hosting providers would be banned for a year from offering services to individuals who host VPNs or proxies if those services land on a Roskomnadzor registry. Hosters would be required to identify their clients strictly and verify the intended use of physical and virtual servers.

TechRadar reported that the measures follow a wave of disruptions in which Russia escalated VPN blocks after State Duma elections. The authorities have moved from simple IP bans to deep packet inspection techniques, and more than 250 VPN services have already been blocked. Earlier campaigns included Russia blocking more than 20 popular VPNs in a major crackdown.

Experts cited by TechRadar said internet providers now have enough statistical data to throttle VPN performance precisely. 'Operators have accumulated enough statistics to move from total blocks to targeted suffocation of quality,' said Sergei Shcherbakov, technical director at Stakhanovets. He described a shift toward making VPNs unbearably slow rather than only outright banned.

Sarkis Darbinyan, an expert at RKS Global and VPN Guild, told TechRadar that VPN operators are responding. 'They are upgrading their protocols, adopting new traffic obfuscation methods, building alternative apps, and using many other guerrilla tactics,' he said. 'None of this, however, guarantees that any given public VPN will remain accessible from Russia. For the end user, the result is a deteriorating VPN experience and an ever-shrinking number of services that actually work.'

Russian users continue a high-stakes cat-and-mouse effort, relying on advanced obfuscation protocols to bypass an increasingly well-funded digital barrier, TechRadar reported.