- Apple has eliminated DVPN from its App Store at Russia’s request
- NORSE LABS’s decentralized VPN was one of Apple’s best free VPN applications
- More than 100 VPN are not currently available in the Russian block App Store, with at least 60 applications killed since July last year
Today early, on April 17, 2025, the Founder and CEO of North Labs, Aleksandr Litreev, received an Apple notification that its decentralized VPN application was eliminated according to the demand of Roskomnadzor “because it includes content that is illegal in Russia.”
The NORSE LABS DVPN application has gained great popularity lately throughout the country, classifying #3 among Apple’s best applications before the block, the supplier reported. It adds to the more than 100 VPN, including some of the best VPN in the market, they are currently not available at the Apple App Store in Russia.
Apple continues to kill the popular VPN of Russia
“Only a few hours ago, Apple eliminated our Nordic Labs DVPN application of the Russian app store, without any valid court order, at the request of Roskomnadzor, the government censorship agency,” Litreeev announced in an X position on Thursday morning.
A popular free VPN application, especially for Apple TV, Mac and iPad Russian users, DVPN is a decentralized NORSE LABS VPN service that is based on a global network of independent nodes instead of centralized VPN servers.
This feature, explains the supplier on its official website, should make it difficult for governments or ISP to block access to the service. Then, it does not promise only better privacy and security, but also stronger censorship choice skills, exactly what is needed to avoid the Roskomnadzor Internet blocks currently in force.
A Russian activist and IT engineer, Litreev is a well -known opposition figure in Russia that was involved with Alexei Navalny’s movement. In 2020, he managed to flee to Estonia and escape from trial.
Since then, he has been working in the Decentralized VPN space to offer privacy and anti-cense solutions to help people in Russia, China, Venezuela and other countries that enforce strong national internet control.
“Ensuring safe and free access to independent media is a fundamental duty of any democratic power in the struggle for human rights, and Apple chose the wrong side,” Litreeev said.
Only a few hours ago, @apple eliminated our application @Norselabs dvpn from the Russian app store, without any valid court order, at the request of Roskomnadzor, the government censorship agency. Thread 👇 pic.twitter.com/cvwwczjsaoApril 17, 2025
Nors Labs is only the last victim of the Roskomnadzor crusade against VPN.
VPN censorship efforts intensified in 2024 since a forced law in March began to criminalize the propagation of information on ways to avoid Internet restrictions. This is probably the legal basis on which the Russian censure body issues these requests.
In 2024, it was discovered that Apple had killed at least 60 VPN applications in this way, taking the total of 98 applications not available from 98 VPN in September. These include some of Techradar’s favorites, such as Nordvpn, Expressvpn and Protonvpn.
The current toll is expected to be even greater, especially taking into account that another popular Russian VPN, the VPN of Amnezia, disappeared from the country app store at the end of October, becoming the last objective of Russia’s anti-VPN actions in 2024.
While Apple seems to have largely fulfilled with the orders of Russia so far, Google Play has also been attacked by similar elimination requests.
According to the latest appcentroship data, Google received 212 VPN blocking orders between March and April 2025. However, among them, only 6 applications seemed to have been eliminated so far, which brought the total VPN services not available in the Google Play store in Russia to 53.
How to keep downloading VPN not available
Litreev said that all users who have already downloaded the NORSE LABS DVPN application before their elimination know that the application they have downloaded is not at risk.
“The application will continue to run despite the attempts of the Russian government to block it,” he said.
In case you have not yet downloaded it, you can still change the region of your application store to any other country. The DVPN application remains available worldwide.
Another alternative is to use the DVPN mini -app version that the supplier has launched on Telegram. Litreev explains that this will remain functional as long as the telegram.
“While we are working on a tool to help our Russian users avoid this absurd restriction and install the application directly, we are also evaluating our options for legal actions,” he added.
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