Russia's campaign to block access to content deemed illegal by the state is continuously monitored by digital rights group Roskomsvoboda. In 2024, over 500,000 websites were subjected to blocking measures, pushing the all-time site blocking total to more than 1.8 million. While VPNs also face blocking, the task isn't always straightforward. The data shows that sales sites in Russia prefer to expose IP addresses owned by foreign companies, located outside Russia.

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Reports concerning the Russian government’s growing intolerance of VPNs, often refer to the technology or associated services as “banned” or otherwise outlawed.

While technically inaccurate, amendments to local law effectively place VPN services into two groups. The first group contains the VPN providers officially registered with the authorities. The second group contains the illegal services, whose owners haven’t yet agreed to provide the authorities with unfettered access, when that becomes necessary.

Illegal VPN services are unsurprisingly illegal to sell. Under more recent amendments, it’s also illegal to promote or encourage illegal VPN use, or provide tutorials or similar assistance to others. These are crimes punishable under law but at least for now, Russian authorities seem more likely to block offending websites, to prevent Russians from viewing illegal information.

Perpetual Blocking

Thanks to the tireless work of digital rights group Roskomsvoboda, blocking orders issued by many government departments, courts, and less easily defined entities that seem to come and go, can be accessed much more easily.

A Verstka.Media review of the blocking data published this week, found a fivefold increase in persistent site blocking in 2024, when compared to data for 2022.

For offenses related to VPNs, torrent and streaming sites, tax offenses and a myriad of other reasons, in 2024 Russia restricted access to over 523,000 infringing sites/URLs. 106,000 restrictions were lifted in the same year, Verstka’s analysis notes.

A closer look at the data reveals that telecoms regulator Roskomnadzor, which oversees most matters concerning online piracy, rogue VPNs, and site blocking in general, is only the second most prolific issuer of blocking instructions in Russia.

As the table shows, the Federal Tax Service is way out in front as the most significant contributor to the all-time blocking totals seen on the bottom line.

Image credit: reestr.rublacklist.netblock leaders

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Determining how many sites have been targeted due to alleged VPN offenses, is much less straightforward.

VPN Summary

To provide a basic overview here, we selected 1,200 of the most recent blocking orders with the term ‘VPN’ present in either the blocked URL or domain name, or the blocked service or platform’s trading/business name.

After filtering for any false matches and removing sites no longer live, resolving all domain names and geolocating IP addresses, we were able to produce a map.

Russia’s VPN problems – everywhere except Russia

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Whern viewed from a deliberately obtuse angle, somewhat amusingly the map suggests that Russia’s VPN concerns were all for nothing. Apart from just a handful of blocked sites ostensibly close to the border, most of the other VPN-linked blocked sites are clearly located in Europe or the United States. Well, perhaps not, but interesting nonetheless.

If Russia had information to prove otherwise, blocking a different IP address would make much more sense.

Still operational

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The revelation that those familiar with VPNs also appreciate reverse proxies, isn’t an especially big surprise. Or any surprise at all. Russia having a blocklist full of Cloudflare IP addresses is almost normal too.

The difficult part is trying to determine who emerges from this entire process having achieved anything of any value. Maybe there’s a technical basis for claiming that Russia successfully exported its VPN problem to the West. There’s certainly very little else.