Russian authorities have sharply escalated their blocking of VPN services in the days following the country’s State Duma parliamentary elections, according to independent Russian outlet Verstka.
Ten separate VPN providers told the outlet they had experienced noticeably tighter restrictions within a single week, marking one of the most concentrated bursts of VPN interference Russia has carried out this year.
According to the reporting, one major VPN service told its users on 25th September that blocking had intensified since the start of that week, with disruption peaking on the day itself.
A second provider said restrictions began on 21st September and forced it to replace eight servers over five days just to keep connections functioning.
Two further services reported that Roskomnadzor, Russia’s communications and media regulator, had blocked all of their foreign server locations and the associated IP addresses outright, rather than picking off individual endpoints.
The identities of the affected providers were withheld by Verstka for security reasons, a decision that itself reflects how sensitive VPN access has become inside Russia.
Alexey Kozlyuk, chairman of the VPN Guild, described the timing as an “expected outcome” of the elections rather than an entirely new campaign, characterising it instead as a continuation of pressure that has been building steadily since early August.
That framing matters: it suggests Russian authorities are treating VPN suppression as a permanent feature of their internet policy rather than a short-term reaction to a single event.
The crackdown comes against a backdrop of surging VPN demand inside Russia, driven largely by the government’s own restrictions on social media platforms, messaging apps and other online services.
As more everyday communication tools get blocked, more ordinary users turn to VPNs to reach them, which in turn appears to be inviting a harder regulatory response.
For VPNCompare readers, the story is a reminder of just how aggressively VPN access can be targeted once a government decides circumvention tools are a priority.
Readers with an interest should treat any provider’s claims of reliability there with caution, since server lists and IP ranges are being blocked faster than most published guides can be updated.
It also underlines a wider point that applies well beyond Russia’s borders. Where governments actively hunt and block VPN infrastructure, the providers best placed to keep working are typically those investing heavily in obfuscated protocols and large, frequently rotated server networks, rather than smaller services with limited engineering resources.
None of this changes the basic legal picture for UK users, for whom using a VPN remains entirely legal. But it does illustrate why VPN providers who serve international audiences increasingly find themselves fighting a rolling, low-level battle against state-level blocking, and why no single provider can promise permanent access in markets where a government is actively working against them.
Neither Roskomnadzor nor the Russian government has publicly commented on the specific incidents described by Verstka’s sources.
