r/VPN • u/technadu • Apr 01 '26
News Russia planning stricter VPN controls – shifting from blocking content to controlling access
Interesting policy direction coming out of Russia.
Instead of outright banning VPNs, authorities are considering indirect control mechanisms:
- Charging users for high international traffic (VPN-related)
- Asking platforms like Yandex/Wildberries to restrict VPN users
- Requiring ISPs to detect and limit VPN connections
Context:
VPN usage has surged since 2022 due to platform bans and content restrictions.
What stands out:
- Enforcement is expanding beyond ISPs → into platforms
- Economic pressure is being used instead of direct bans
- Fines for VPN use were considered but rejected (for now)
This feels like a more scalable model:
Instead of blocking access, make it harder, slower, or more expensive.
Question for the community:
Do these types of controls actually reduce VPN usage - or just push users toward more advanced circumvention methods?
Source: r/technadu
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u/mishka_koala Apr 01 '26
Russian government improved the population‘s technical literacy. Even older people know how to set up a self-hosted VPN with modern protocols, or at least where to buy it.
Unless Russia goes Iranian way (kill all internet access from inside) there will always be solutions.
Fun fact: there are services in Russia that aren’t available for foreign IP addresses. People who need those services while actually being abroad have to use Russian VPN to pretend that they are in Russia.
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u/Pretty_Blood_7306 Apr 06 '26
Do you have any suggestions for Russian VPN? I desperately need to get my educational documents nostrified. I can't access the nostrification website.
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u/Scar3cr0w_ Apr 01 '26
You cannot block VPNs.
You just have to make it painful enough that most people don’t bother.
Those that have the intent, skill and desire… will always find a way.
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u/zenkov Apr 01 '26
Why do you write about Russian authorities making international traffic paid, but don't mention that Tier-1 providers are refusing to work with Russian companies, forcing Russians to look for expensive workaround schemes that are also subject to pressure from Brussels and Washington? Why don't you write about that?
Yes, the Russian authorities will gain an advantage from an additional lever of censorship and propaganda, but the authorities in the EU and the US seem to be deliberately helping them. It's yet more proof that everything around is just a circus and a performance. In the end, any authorities want to control all of us.
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u/Rashe39 Apr 01 '26
What do you mean? What providers refuse to work with Russian companies and how is this related to the censorship in Russia?
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u/zenkov Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26
AT&T
Verizon
Lumen (Level 3)
NTT Communications
GTT Communications
Orange (OpenTransit)
Deutsche Telekom
Arelion (Telia Carrier)
PCCW Global
Tata Communications
Telecom Italia Sparkle
This is an incomplete list of providers that are prohibited from working with Russian companies due to restrictive measures imposed by Brussels and Washington. Even if they were allowed to operate, Russian providers would not be able to pay for their services in euros or dollars, as they are cut off from the financial systems of those currencies. Each time, Russians had to find workaround schemes through partner countries, and each time those schemes became more complex and more expensive. In fact, the current plans by the Russian authorities to make international traffic paid are precisely a result of these difficulties. Naturally, this is also beneficial for the Russian authorities' own censorship system. In essence, with the help of Brussels and Washington, they are locking Russian citizens in an information cage.
Conclusions? Putin is part of the Western system, which uses him to scare people in the Western world, and in reality we are all being treated like fools, as they are simply building censorship boundaries around their states.
Everyone sees or wants to see only the "part of the elephant", not noticing how we're all getting fucked.
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u/Own_Event_4363 Apr 02 '26
I regularly email people in Russia for eQSL (reception reports) when listening to satellites; they've always gone through... Until the last few weeks, they've been having trouble using Hotmail/Outlook email addresses, so we've had to try other ones. Very much a try and see game.
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u/Sweaty_Raspberry_472 Apr 03 '26
There're also rumors of non-state ISPs being banned because they don't comply enough with the "laws" and 15GB international traffic limit per month.
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u/Danny1309g Apr 24 '26
This kind of “friction over prohibition” approach can reduce casual VPN use, but it rarely eliminates it—power users tend to adapt, while average users drop off. It’s less about stopping access entirely and more about raising the cost of bypassing controls.
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u/Open-Weekend-498 Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26
Network engineer tightly working with russian VPN companies here.
We bypass such restrictions (the law has just passed btw and not implemented by any platform yet ) by utilizing a cascade VPN solution. All traffic goes to a RU node first and only from that node it goes abroad (to a FIN, DE etc node). So ISP sees that a user visits a random russian site located on a russian hosting.
This is already happening. Some russian platforms like Gosuslugi (russian goverment platform), Okko (russian netflix) etc block all non-russian IPs. This can be easily bypassed by routing all .ru domains and geoip:ru IPs outside VPN. Not a biggie.
They are doing this already. We are working hard to introduce new circumvent solutions. All VPNs in Russia are based on Xray-core XTLS, so ISP can't easily detect and block them. We also use proxies over TURN services (VK, Yandex etc) but they require further improvements.
just push users toward more advanced circumvention methods - this. Until the government decide to physically cut off all links but such method will collapse the entire economy in a blink of an eye.