Russian authorities are introducing new restrictions against VPNs. How to deal with them?

VPN services remain the main tool for Russians against censorship on the Internet. In this regard, the Ministry of Digital Development has been tasked with reducing the use of VPNs. We tell you what the new restrictions from the ministry may lead to and how they can be circumvented.

What else have the authorities come up with? So what should the Russians do?

Tax on international mobile traffic (currently in plans). According to Forbes sources, the Ministry of Digital Development asked operators to charge fees for using international traffic over 15 GB per month. The BBC Russian Service clarified that each “extra” gigabyte will cost 150 rubles.

In this case, international means traffic coming from foreign servers. VPN services that Russians use to bypass censorship, of course, use servers abroad. With VPN enabled, all traffic will be considered international - even if you go to a Russian site or service.

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It would be logical to charge for the use of VPN traffic, and not all international traffic. But Roskomnadzor is not always able to recognize VPN traffic, a Russian IT expert who asked not to use his name explains to Important Stories. RKN blocks VPN services, including using TSPU devices, which, according to the “sovereign Internet” law, are installed on all operators. VPN services still have the ability to disguise VPN traffic as “legal” - it looks like a connection to a regular foreign website. Operators have their own traffic filtering devices (they do not have access to TSPU management), but they are unlikely to be able to reliably separate VPN traffic from regular international traffic.

What to do? The possible limit of 15 GB per month is aimed primarily at those users who almost never turn off the VPN, says IT expert Denis Alshanov. In this case, all traffic will go through a foreign server and, if a person actively uses the mobile Internet, it may well exceed 15 GB.

People who consume a lot of real international traffic (whether with or without a VPN) will probably need to save it. For example, study how much traffic YouTube uses and watch videos in lower quality. Let's say, switching from Full HD to HD will save 1–1.5 GB per hour.

The problem with saving international traffic is that a person cannot know for sure when and how much he will spend it, notes Alshanov. For example, the servers of a site with the ru domain zone may be located abroad, which means they will spend the limit. “Even in the case of whitelisted sites, you can run into cross-border traffic,” says the expert. The fact is that many large Russian services use data centers abroad, for example, in Kazakhstan. When using the service in Russia, part of the data can be downloaded from there and this may well be considered international traffic. However, for such “accidental mistakes”, a limit of 15 GB is guaranteed to be enough, Alshanov is sure. The Ministry of Digital Development believes that on average Russians spend about 10 GB of international traffic per month.

An unusual way to bypass the limit on international traffic (and Internet censorship in general) is suggested by Sergei Boyko from the Internet Protection Society: get SIM cards from operators from Central Asia and use mobile Internet in Russian roaming. According to Boyko, operators from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan do not want to lose clients who leave to work in Russia, so they offer them reasonable tariffs. Mobile traffic in this case can cost two to three times more than with Russian operators, but you will have access to many social networks and sites blocked in Russia. Z-channels also drew attention to the fact that migrants have no problems with access to resources prohibited in Russia.

A ban on accessing Russian services with VPN enabled (may already be working). The Ministry of Digital Development demanded that more than 20 of the largest online services and stores block users with VPN enabled. If they refuse, they are threatened with exclusion from the “white lists” - a register of sites and services that operate during mobile Internet outages. The ban will be aimed at VPN services that do not comply with Russian laws; the ministry promises to provide a list of their IP addresses. According to Izvestia, some marketplaces have already begun to restrict users with VPNs.

Services, compared to TSPU, have much more opportunities to understand whether the user has a VPN enabled. In this case, it is fundamentally unimportant how a person accesses the service: an application or a website, from a mobile device or computer, via mobile Internet or wired, says David Frenkel, a Mediazona journalist who studies blocking on the RuNet.

A month ago it became known that the state messenger Max is trying to determine whether the user has VPN enabled. The algorithm may be as follows. First, the application finds out whether the user has access to resources blocked in Russia - if so, then he is probably using a VPN. Then, using IP detection services, it finds out the user’s IP. To confirm the use of a VPN, the spy application can compare the current connection data with previous ones. If you report the user’s IP (that is, IP VPN) to Roskomnadzor, they can easily block it even without the help of TSPU.

The authorities will probably oblige all major online services to act in this way. This could threaten them with losing some users. For example, if a person with VPN enabled is denied access to one online store, he can go to another that is open to him. The costs of blocking will also be significant: there are estimates that they will cost all large companies 15 billion rubles a year. In addition, the AppStore can remove the “spyware” application - simply according to privacy rules, says an anonymous IT expert.

What to do? Probably, the main task of the authorities is not to identify and block all VPNs using online services, but to make sure that people get tired of constantly turning VPNs on and off and they increasingly abandon blocked resources and switch to Russian ones, says David Frenkel.

There are no ideal recommendations on how to bypass the ban on visiting sites with VPN enabled. Perhaps over time, the VPN will have settings that will allow you to access certain services “directly” - without VPN traffic. In this case, the user will not be blocked.

Constantly turning off your VPN when using spy services can be really tedious and inconvenient. A simple example: if you need to get somewhere by taxi or go to an unfamiliar place using Yandex Maps, then the VPN will have to be turned off for quite a long time. And the resources for which you installed the VPN will be unavailable. For example, it will not be possible to reach you in blocked messengers.

An option to bypass these restrictions could be a second phone without a VPN and exclusively for Russian services. At the beginning of the year, Russia already recorded an increased demand for cheap phones for installing the Max messenger. In particular, some officials acquired “maxophones”.

The obvious disadvantage is additional costs. In addition, from the “main” phone with a VPN, you can accidentally get to a site where a Yandex counter is installed, and the search engine can gain access to information about the user, warns David Frenkel: “There is no guarantee that a accidentally visited site or an accidentally installed application will not report you.”

Prohibition of paying in the AppStore from a mobile account (already working). This is the most understandable of the recent restrictions. After the start of the war, Russian owners of Apple devices lost the opportunity to pay for purchases in the AppStore with Russian cards. But there was still an option to top up your Apple ID account through a mobile operator. From April 1, this can no longer be done.

What to do? The most affordable option is to top up your Apple ID account using Apple gift cards; they can be purchased on marketplaces. Finding cards issued for Russia is becoming increasingly difficult. It’s easier to buy a card issued for a different region, the inconvenience is that before activating it you will have to change the region of the device to the one for which the card is intended. You can read more about this payment method here or here .

Of course, there remains the option to pay for purchases in the AppStore with a foreign card.

Will restrictions reach wired Internet?

The authorities have all the possibilities for this, experts tell Important Stories. Wired Internet operators can both count international traffic and limit Internet access with “white lists”, as mobile operators do. When on March 31, “The Durov Code” wrote about the work of the Rostov home Internet operator in the “white list” mode, the Ministry of Digital Development denied this. But Rostelecom, the largest wired Internet operator, said : “If the relevant government authorities introduce it on the optical Internet, we will comply.”

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The main problem is that there are a lot of wireline operators (as opposed to mobile ones) in Russia; the head of the Ministry of Digital Development, Maksut Shadayev, spoke in November about about seven thousand. The minister complained that small operators often do not comply with government requirements and said: “We are at a tipping point where we must rethink the current system of market regulation.”

A rethink will probably be a reduction in the number of operators: the Ministry of Digital Development plans to achieve this by tightening licensing requirements. Operators are regularly fined for violations of the rules for installing or using TSPU; from October 15 to March 31, Roskomnadzor drew up 28 protocols, the amount of fines for them amounted to 4 million rubles.

It is logical that a reduction in the number of operators will lead to a drop in competition and higher prices. The cost of home Internet (and mobile communications) in 2026 may increase by 15–20%, says Sergei Skvortsov, founder of the DomInternet service. In March, the Dom.ru operator began limiting the speed of users who used more than 3 TB of traffic.

“Is it possible to absorb all the small operators and leave a dozen large ones that will introduce white lists? Yes, it's possible. It’s clear that you can’t do it in two months, it’s a matter of a year, two, maybe several years,” says David Frenkel.

Will Russians suffer abroad?

Those who are abroad may have problems accessing government services or, for example, buying tickets on the Russian Railways website. In recent years, it has not always been possible to use such resources from abroad normally. Let’s say that now access to State Services is open, but you can’t go to mos.ru. Usually a VPN connection through a Russian server helps, but there are times when this method does not work.

If desired, the authorities can completely block access to their services from abroad, experts tell Important Stories. But so far there is no real reason to say that this will happen. Such steps could harm not only those who disagree with the policies of the Russian authorities, but also completely loyal citizens working for Russian companies from abroad. Services that block foreign users likely do so to reduce the risk of cyber attacks.

The State Duma advised those who are abroad to use a VPN to access government services in Russia. The Russian app store RuStore is developing its own VPN. On the one hand, it can be used to access authorized foreign sites, on the other hand, for free access to Russian government services from abroad.