Russia's VPN crackdown disrupts banks, marketplaces and government services

Russia's intensified blocking of virtual private networks (VPNs) is causing widespread collateral disruption to legal banking, e-commerce, government and healthcare services, with Novosibirsk among the worst-hit regions, Russian media reported on April 28, citing IT-Balance specialist Lolita Piven.

Novosibirsk residents reported being unable to access Russia's largest bank in early April, with mobile apps failing to open, ATMs going silent, and card terminals refusing transactions, as the Kremlin continues to attempt to move the country toward a national intranet system similar to Iran's and away from the World Wide Web, which allows unfettered access to Western based websites and applications. Authorities have been cutting mobile data, throttling or blocking messaging services such as Telegram and WhatsApp, and in some areas using “whitelists” that allow only approved sites to load.

Russia's VPN servers installed at every operator's node have, since December 2025, been able to detect the VLESS protocol, one of the last relatively stable methods for obscuring VPN traffic.

By March 2026, complaints were arriving from across the country as people were unable to access several sites and payment gateways, effectively disconnecting large swathes from globa services including gaming.

"Sometimes even regular traffic is restricted, especially if its behaviour is similar to the blocked one," Piven said. "As a result, certain websites and services may temporarily stop working, even if they are not directly related to the VPN."

A deep packet inspection (DPI) filtering test at Novosibirsk's backbone communications hub in April triggered throttling of nearly all traffic. The situation was compounded by a fibre optic cable break on the M-4 highway between Berdsk and Iskitim.

Since April 15, more than 20 of Russia's largest platforms have begun restricting access to users with VPNs enabled at the government's request. Banks were hit first, followed by marketplaces Wildberries and Ozon, where product cards failed to load. Yandex services, including email, navigation, grocery and taxi, were also affected.

Telegram was effectively unavailable in Novosibirsk by late April, with an estimated 99% outage rate. Government services platform Gosuslugi began restricting VPN-enabled access from April 15-16. Healthcare booking systems, including EMIAS, were also affected.

Russian employers could lose up to RUB500bn ($6bn) per month due to internet outages in April 2026, equivalent to RUB7.2bn-26bn per day, according to estimates by Inssmart and Kommersant. The Kremlin has so far brushed off complaints as it continues to lock down access to internet services. 

Top10VPN estimated Russia's economic losses from internet restrictions in 2025 at around $11.9bn, or RUB900-950bn. Losses could rise to RUB1.3-1.8 trillion per year if restrictions tighten further, including a transition to a whitelist model.

Over the last few years, virtual private networks (VPNs) have become an everyday necessity for millions of Russians, helping them to access websites banned by the government – from foreign social media platforms and messaging apps to independent media outlets.

Currently, Russians are facing major restrictions online: the total number of blacklisted websites has reached nearly 5mn. Major global platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and X, have been blocked since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Similarly, there are major restrictions on popular messaging apps, such as Telegram and WhatsApp. For many users, the solution is to use one of the many available VPN services - both free and paid.

Technically, the use of a VPN in Russia is not illegal. However, over the last few years, the authorities have been taking action against VPN apps.

Russia's media watchdog, Roskomnadzor, regularly blocks VPNs, and the number of blocked VPN services has exceeded 400. The agency has also been able to get several VPN apps removed from the Russian App Store.

Last year, Russia passed a law imposing fines for using VPNs "to search for extremist content." The fine amounts to RUB3,000–5,000 ($38-$62). However, this applies only to the deliberate search for materials included by the Ministry of Justice in the federal list of extremist materials, and the law hasn't been widely applied.

A fine has also been introduced for advertising VPN services. The fine is up to RUB80,000 ($996) for individuals, up to RUB150,000 ($1,867) for officials and up to RUB500,000 ($6,223) for legal entities.

In early April, the Ministry of Digital Development sent Russian IT companies a guidance document on combating the use of VPN services, the business daily RBC reported.

According to RBC, the list of recipients includes Sberbank, Yandex, VK, Wildberries, Ozon, Avito, X5 and others.

The tech news website CNews reported that the local tech giants were told to begin restricting Russians' access to their internet services via VPN as of mid-April 2026. Those who fail to do so were threatened with the revocation of their IT accreditation, which would immediately result in the loss of benefits for both the companies themselves, such as lower tax rates, and their employees, currently entitled to lower-rate mortgages, deferral from military service and other privileges.

According to RBC, the digital development ministry also intends to oblige the owners of the most popular websites not only to block access to their services for users with VPNs enabled, but also to "help identify VPN services that Roskomnadzor has not previously identified or restricted."

Experts say, however, that this approach could run into problems. Alexey Raevsky, CEO of Zecurion and a cybersecurity expert, was quoted by RBC as saying that it could lead to mistaken blocking of access to websites for legitimate users and the slowing down of services. Furthermore, creating a VPN detection system would require substantial resources, including a team to develop and maintain the software, as well as additional computing power to store information in a database and analyse it. According to Raevsky, this could cost companies tens of millions of rubles a month.