Inside Russia’s VPN War: Blocklists, Deep Packet Inspection and a Bypass Tool Built by an Ex-Censor

Few countries are fighting the VPN war as openly, or as expensively, as Russia. Over the past year the state has blocked hundreds of services, pressured Apple and Google to delete apps, forced domestic companies to detect VPN users and funded a permanent blocking system. And yet VPN use keeps rising. This week a new report added a twist worthy of a spy novel: a former insider from Russia’s censorship machinery is reportedly the lead developer of a tool built to beat it.

This deep dive pulls together the most recent reporting into a single map of the conflict. We explain how the blocking works, what the numbers say, why the cat-and-mouse game is so costly for ordinary users, and what the latest revelation does and does not prove. As always, we write for readers new to the topic, so technical ideas arrive with analogies.

01  The scoreboard so far

Numbers can blur together, so let us anchor them. Recorded Future’s analysis found that as of October 2025 the regulator had blocked 258 VPN services. By early 2026 the figure had risen by more than 70% to 460. Human Rights Watch, counting under the 2017 law that bans VPNs from giving access to state-blocked websites, put the total at no fewer than 469 by February. Another journalist’s tally, cited by TechRadar, suggests that more than 400 services are banned and over 1,000 restricted. Counting methods differ, but all point the same direction: up, and fast.

Meanwhile demand has not collapsed. Recorded Future cites Kommersant figures putting the share of Russians who use a VPN at 39% in early 2026, up 8.3 percentage points from 2025. Other estimates suggest around 57 million people depend on circumvention tools. That is the paradox at the center of this story: the harder the state squeezes, the more people learn how to slip through.

02  How the blocking actually works

To understand why this fight is so hard, you need a mental picture of how a VPN can be stopped. There are two broad methods.

Russia has leaned heavily on the second approach. Reporting describes the expanded use of TSPU equipment, the so-called technical means of countering threats, installed at major internet exchange points. Because the hardware sits in the middle of the network, it can inspect and steer traffic centrally. A unified state commission, established in March 2026, was created to coordinate traffic filtering, isolate regional nodes and run protocol blocks across networks. Human Rights Watch notes that the authorities have been blocking the three most popular VPN protocols since December 2025, and The Bell’s reporting says one widely used protocol was effectively killed after the start of the war in Ukraine.

There is a third front that gets less attention. In mid-2026 the state began shifting from blocking VPN traffic at the internet-provider level to forcing domestic apps themselves to act against VPN users. Starting April 15, major Russian service providers were legally required to detect whether a user is connected through a VPN. Many services now stop working when a VPN is on, which means people face an awkward choice: use the open internet through a tunnel, or use domestic services that refuse to cooperate. Independent trackers also report that 74 of Russia’s 83 regions have introduced allowlists of government-approved sites.

03  The money, the app stores and the 92% goal

This is not improvised. A Roskomnadzor subsidy document dated January and reported publicly in May set a goal of restricting VPN access with an average effectiveness of 92% by 2030, with roughly 20 billion rubles a year earmarked for the infrastructure. That reframes everything. A temporary crackdown can end. A funded, multi-year engineering program is something else: a permanent institution with budgets, vendors and performance targets.

App stores are a second pressure point. Human Rights Watch reports that Apple removed 1,213 apps in response to Russian government requests in 2025. In March 2026 it took down several popular VPN clients, including Streisand, V2Box, v2RayTun, Happ and Proxy Utility, after notices citing demands from Roskomnadzor on the grounds that the apps included content that is illegal in Russia. Google, for its part, was fined in February for failing to scrub VPNs from its store. The message to platforms is blunt: comply or pay.

After the State Duma elections, the squeeze tightened further. Meduza reported on September 29 that ten services told users about stricter restrictions in just one week. One of the largest and best-known providers said in a September 25 email that blocking had intensified since the start of that week and peaked that day. The chairman of the VPN Guild described the surge as an expected outcome of the elections, though he noted that pressure had been building since early August and that some services saw no increase.

Block a thousand doors and people learn to build windows. Then you spend the budget blocking windows.

— Coedee Team

04  The plot twist: an ex-censor on the other side

The newest chapter comes from reporting by The Bell, relayed in English by Meduza on October 28. It concerns AIVPN, a GitHub project designed to bypass government blocks in countries where authorities use DPI. According to the report, the person who wrote most of the code, Vladislav Minakov, previously worked at the Main Radio Frequency Center, a Roskomnadzor agency whose duties include blocking websites in Russia. Ads for AIVPN began appearing online in the spring of 2026, and the project’s first code changes by that developer date to June 10, 2026.

Why does this matter? Because the people who build blocking systems know their weaknesses. Someone who spent years implementing censorship understands what the filters can detect, how updates are rolled out and where the practical gaps lie. The reporting frames this as irony: a person who built part of the wall now helps design tools to climb it.

We should be careful about what this does not establish. It does not prove that AIVPN is safe, effective or free of risk. Circumvention tools handle sensitive traffic, so trust in a developer’s background is only one factor. Open-source code can be inspected, but most users do not read it. It also does not show that the regulator is leaking secrets or that the project is endorsed by anyone. It shows that expertise flows in surprising directions, and that the technical race between blockers and builders is a talent race too. Separately, the same reporting trail notes that Roskomnadzor has threatened to block OpenVPN, a reminder that no mainstream protocol is considered safe from the regulator’s ambitions.

05  The hidden tax on ordinary users

The headline numbers hide a quieter cost. When blocks come every few weeks, users do not simply switch once. They keep a rotating collection of apps, trying one after another as each stops working. Human Rights Watch warns that this churn pushes people toward riskier services, including ones that store data without their consent or share it with authorities. In a market where trustworthy options keep getting blocked, the careless ones fill the gap.

VPN providers pay a price as well. HRW says the new tactics create significant technical, financial and operational challenges and damage the reputation of services that now fail unpredictably. Servers must be replaced constantly. Support teams are swamped. Payment channels get disrupted. Even legitimate corporate users feel the effects, with one analysis pointing out that the crackdown also hampers the development of Russian software.

Then there is the surveillance dimension. Earlier this year, authorities reportedly directed major Russian internet companies to quietly log users’ VPN connections. Meduza has also reported that August’s VPN crackdown relied on data collected by the country’s own apps. If true, that closes a loop: the apps people use every day become sensors, the data feeds the blocking, and the blocking pushes people toward more VPNs.

06  What it means beyond Russia

Russia is a laboratory, and others are watching. Techniques refined there, from centralized DPI to pressure on app stores to forcing domestic platforms to police VPN use, can be exported or imitated. Commercial censorship systems have already spread across borders in recent years. At the same time, the circumvention community is learning too, which is why obfuscation and protocol innovation are becoming selling points across the whole VPN industry.

For readers outside Russia, the lesson is not that VPN technology is doomed. It is that reliability and trust are the scarce resources. A VPN that is fast on a quiet day but collapses under pressure is not much help when you need it. Look for providers with a record of fast server rotation, multiple protocols, clear communication during outages and independent audits.