Roskomnadzor de Russia issued 212 VPN blocking orders against Google Play between March and April 2025 Of these specific VPNs, only 6 applications are not available in the country app store In contrast, it was discovered that Apple had killed at least 60 VPN applications only in 2024 at the request of Roskomnadzor
Russia’s censure agency, Roskomnadzor, issued 212 VPN blocking orders against Google between March and April 2025. However, 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.
Russian research journalist Maria Kolomychenko first discovered that Google received at least 47 VPN elimination orders from some of the best VPN applications as of March 12. After this revelation, the Great Fire Appcensorship project researchers began to analyze the availability of 399 VPN applications, revealing that Roskomnadzor actually pointed to 212 VPN tools.
Greatfire’s findings show an escalation in the Kremlin war in VPN. However, unlike Apple, which killed at least 60 VPN applications at the request of Roskomnadzor only in 2024, Google seems to have resisted most of the Russian VPN blocking applications so far.
214 Removal requests aimed at 212 VPN
Roskomnadzor’s fight against VPN applications is certainly not new. However, as Greatfire’s campaign and defense director, Benjamin Ismail, says: “The Russian government is fighting a total war in the VPNs and all other tools that allow Russian citizens to avoid censorship and surveillance.”
Specifically, Greatfire registered a total of 214 elimination orders issued against Google between March 12 and April 1, 2025. Among these, 212 specific virtual networks (VPN) specific and similar applications such as client VPN and proxy tools.
Several of these requests were issued under a law applied in March last year, which criminalizes the propagation of information on ways to avoid Internet restrictions, including VPNs. However, using a VPN is not a crime in Russia.
As mentioned above, Google seems to have largely resisted Russia’s censorship demands so far. Greatfire discovered, in fact, that only 6 of the VPN led by the last wave of Roskomnadzor applications are not currently available in Play Store. These include the popular Expressvpn service.
It was found that a total of 53 VPN services were not available at the Google Play store in Russia. These include the tastes of Nordvpn, Cyberghost, Private Internet Access (PIA) and Astrill VPN.
Popular applications such as Proton VPN, Mullvad and Amnezia VPN are still accessible through Google Play stores in the country at the time of writing.
As of September 16, 2024, Greatfire found a total of 98 VPN applications They were not available from the Russian App Store, which shows the highest Apple compliance rate with elimination applications. (Image credit: Getty images)
Interestingly, however, the researchers found some inconsistencies with their own requests for elimination of Roskomnadzor, which in several cases went to VPN applications that had already been eliminated.
Expressvpn is an example of that, since it seems not to have been available at the Google Play in Russia at least since March and September 2024.
Another challenge is to determine when an application was eliminated, as well as the exact reason behind its lack of availability. For example, Avast VPN confirmed in a blog post the company’s decision to stop operating in Russia after the Ukraine War. The government may also have pressed more developers to leave the country’s application stores.
However, according to Ismail, this does not mean that censorship is absent.
He told Techradar: “Self -censorship is still censorship: it is a more indirect and systemic way, instead of a formal demolition. And if, in the end, it was the only decision of the developer to eliminate the application as part of a broader withdrawal of the Russian market, we regret such an option.”
Appcensorship now asks for greater independent supervision and transparency of technological platforms.
You can check the complete VPN list not available on Google Play here. If you are in Russia and fight to download your desired VPN, we recommend changing the location of your application store or, on Android, finding alternative side response options.
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