Russia invests more than half a billion dollars in the fight against VPN use
Russia is looking to improve its censorship infrastructure and plans to spend nearly 60 billion rubles (about $650 million) over the next five years to modernize its internet blocking system.
This is the strategy outlined in the federal project ‘Cybersecurity Infrastructure’ as reported by ForbesRussian censorship agency Roskomnadzor wants to build a more effective filtering system to block VPN services in particular.
The Kremlin has long cracked down on VPN use across the country. That’s because a VPN (virtual private network) is security software that encrypts internet connections and spoofs users’ IP addresses, allowing access to otherwise geo-restricted content — exactly what Russian authorities want to prevent.
The end of VPN use in Russia?
For countries like Russia, China, Myanmar, and Iran – countries notorious for imposing severe restrictions on the internet – VPN use has long been a target. Over time, this has led to an endless game of cat and mouse between authorities and VPN providers to find a way to evade VPN censorship.
Technologies like VPN obfuscation and IP rotation have proven particularly useful in bypassing these blocks, with companies like Proton VPN continuing to invest in new anti-censorship tools. Now, the Kremlin appears prepared to invest big money in reversing this trend.
“Russian authorities seem to be trying to implement the Iranian model of internet censorship (although we previously expected the Chinese model), where IP addresses are categorized into white, gray and blacklists,” Stanislav Shakirov, CTO of Russian digital rights group Roskomsvoboda and founder of Privacy Accelerator, told me. “But they haven’t been able to achieve this yet with the current infrastructure.”
Currently, the Russian technical approach to countering threats (TSPU in Russian) filters all internet traffic to block or slow down certain resources. But as Shakirov explained, the implementation of DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) has technical limitations. For example, “it lacks sufficient computing power to block VPN protocols and slow down YouTube at the same time,” Shakirov said.
This is where the new strategy comes in. Between 2025 and 2030, Roskomnadzor plans to both modernize the current TSPU and install new ones. Censors expect this to increase the efficiency of VPN blocking by 96%.
In response to censorship, Russians are rapidly adopting VPNs. The government blocks at least 42 providers, but smaller services and decentralized protocols are still available pic.twitter.com/EabxUDHUPnMay 16, 2023
Since 2019, all Russian telecom operators are legally required to install TSPU software, which allows Roskomnadzor censors to filter out unwanted online resources. The grip on RuNet (Russian Internet) was further tightened after the invasion of Ukraine. In 2022 alone, more than 100,000 resources were blocked, compared to around 7,000 the year before.
As censorship increased, VPN use in Russia also skyrocketed. Authorities subsequently intensified a VPN crackdown that began in 2017. The most recent measure includes forcing Apple to remove at least 29 VPN apps from its local App Store. In addition, a law enforced in March now criminalizes the dissemination of information about ways to circumvent internet restrictions.
If data from the DPIDetector project suggests that major VPN providers are currently blocked based on IP addresses and service domains, something that can be circumvented with an IP rotation feature.
Shakirov explained that authorities have also cracked down on VPN apps at the protocol level over the past year. For example, WireGuard is blocked by mobile operators and, since August, on home internet connections. OpenVPN has also become harder to use, but blocking remains inconsistent. In addition, VPN software that uses more advanced anti-censorship technologies such as Amnezia VPN, developed by Roskomsvoboda, continues to work well in Russia.
He said: “It is clear that current technical resources are insufficient to block even a basic VPN protocol like OpenVPN, let alone more complex technologies. Therefore, these equipment purchases are a necessary step for Roskomnadzor, although we cannot say whether they will be sufficient.”