- Russian authorities have extended the deadline for applying fees for VPN use until after the September elections.
- At the same time, there has been a wave of “more aggressive and targeted” VPN restrictions.
- A group of popular Telegram proxies also reportedly stopped working
Last week’s news that the Russian government agreed to suspend VPN fees until after the elections (scheduled for September) probably gave residents a sigh of relief. That comfort didn’t last long, however, as the Kremlin continues to ramp up its war on VPNs and similar apps.
“Right now, all VPNs in Russia are really suffering. The situation is not looking good,” a spokesperson for Russian digital rights group RKS Global told TechRadar.
The group confirmed that Russian authorities have launched a major new wave of lockdowns in recent weeks, including even “more aggressive and targeted” restrictions.
TechRadar found many Reddit posts published this week lamenting problems with VPNs working in Russia. The affected VPNs include Amnezia VPN, a service that uses obfuscation technologies (such as the AmenziaWG and X-Ray protocols) built to operate on highly restricted networks.
Speaking to TechRadar, Amenzia VPN founder Mazay Banzaev confirmed that Currently, IP addresses and subnets are being blocked “on a massive scale.” This causes some servers and locations to become inaccessible to users, he explained.
“At the same time, we are also seeing signs of increased scrutiny of VLESS traffic and the possible use of new methods to restrict it,” Banzaev said. VLESS is the technology behind Amnezia’s X-Ray protocol, which is specially designed to evade heavy blocks and deep packet inspection (DPI).
The most significant blockage appears to have occurred last week. Russian tech outlet Kod Durova (or Code Durova in English) reported an “unprecedented number of complaints” lamenting the unavailability of Telegram’s censorship-resistant capabilities.
A source familiar with the matter told Kod Durova that Russia’s censorship body, Roskomnadzor, appears to have “found another vulnerability in the MTProto proxy mechanism on Telegram, causing them to go down en masse.”
The Kremlin’s war on VPNs
The Kremlin’s war on VPNs is nothing new, but it became especially harsh during the spring.
In late March, Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development announced a new plan to “reduce VPN use” just after the popular messaging app Telegram became the latest service to be restricted in the country.
Under the plan, Russian providers must detect and block VPN connections starting April 15. Otherwise, you could lose your IT accreditation.
Researchers at RKS Global now suggest that all of the country’s most popular apps can now tell if someone is using a VPN. To do this, the group recommends avoiding using Max or other Russian-based apps on the same device where you need a working VPN connection.
This method seems to work. An anonymous source living in Russia told TechRadar that they experienced better connections in May than in April after avoiding using Russian apps. “Maybe it’s my behavior away from Yandex, Ozon and Wildberries,” they told us.
The next step is to impose new fees for VPN users, a surcharge for those who exceed 15 GB of international data per month. This measure, which was expected to come into force on May 1, initially encountered some technical delays. Now, the government has decided to postpone it until the elections.
However, Roskomnadzor made it clear: the goal is to block 92% of VPN apps by 2030. To achieve this, the agency is investing 20 billion rubles a year in an effort to build a permanent VPN censorship system.
Despite technical obstacles, VPNs have so far continued to adapt to new censorship tactics and evade blocks. It now remains to be seen whether this game of cat and mouse will continue to swing in favor of VPNs.
That said, Banzaev told TechRadar that the team is already working to restore infrastructure availability, while adapting the service to the new conditions.
“As compensation for the inconvenience caused, we have automatically extended all Amnezia Premium subscriptions by two weeks,” he said, suggesting testing the protocol or location in case of interruptions.
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