Roskomnadzor Regularly Updates List of Blocked VPN Services

Roskomnadzor (RKN), Russia’s federal communications regulator, regularly updates its list of VPN services operating in Russia and restricts access to those that violate Russian law. The agency reported this in response to a TASS inquiry about additional VPN service blockings.

Previously, according to media reports, information appeared in Telegram channels suggesting that Roskomnadzor may soon restrict access in Russia to several popular VPN services, including Cyberghost VPN, McAfee VPN, Quark VPN, Ultrasurf VPN, VPN Super Unlimited Proxy, Zenmate VPN, VPN Russia – Unblock Proxy, and VPN HUB.

It’s worth noting that in the summer, Russia became the second country (after India) in terms of VPN service downloads between March and July. The increase in downloads may be linked to the growing number of popular online resources and restrictions imposed on VPN services themselves.

Russian users began actively downloading VPN services after February 24. The first surge in popularity occurred amid news about reduced access speeds to Twitter and the blocking of Facebook and Instagram. At the end of May and the beginning of June, Roskomnadzor started blocking specific VPN services.