By mid-January of this year, Roskomnadzor had imposed restrictions on 439 VPN services that could be used to access information whose distribution is prohibited within the country. This is 70% higher than the figure for the fall of 2024. сообщает "Kommersant".
In October 2025, the regulator reported a 31% increase in VPN service blocking to 258. In December, Roskomnadzor began actively blocking additional VPN protocols, including SOCKS5, VLESS, and L2TP. This significantly expanded the list of services subject to blocking.
Let us remind you that since 2017, those working in the country VPN services Access to banned websites must be restricted. If this fails, Roskomnadzor will restrict access to the service itself. Additionally, a ban on disseminating information about how to access blocked resources came into effect in March 2024, and a law banning advertising of tools for bypassing blocking systems came into effect in September 2025. Fines for violating the ban on VPN advertising can be up to 80 rubles for individuals, up to 150 rubles for officials, and up to 500 rubles for legal entities.
Roskomnadzor uses it to block VPN Special internet service provider filters that analyze so-called traffic "fingerprints," including server IP addresses, ports, and encryption types. Despite this, demand for VPNs in Russia remains consistently high. Sensor Tower data for the third quarter of 2025 indicates that the user base of the five most popular VPN services in the country grew from 274 to over 6 million. The Piter-IX traffic exchange added that it has seen a sharp increase in international traffic since the end of December last year.
"According to my information, demand for VPNs in Russia will increase by 36% in 2025," said Alexey Leron, an independent expert in artificial intelligence and information technology and a PhD candidate in economics. He added that protocol limitations and connection instability are forcing people to seek more sophisticated solutions.
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Source: 3dnews.ru
