The Federation Council has allowed the blocking of all VPN services since March 2024

From March 1, 2024, Roskomnadzor will be able to block all VPN services in app stores that provide access to prohibited sites. About this in the commentary to RIA Novosti stated Member of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building Artem Sheikin.

“Starting March 1, 2024, an order will come into force according to which VPN services that provide access to sites banned in Russia will be blocked by Roskomnadzor in all markets,” he said.

Earlier in an interview with TASS, Sheikin said that sent a letter to the Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Communications Maksut Shadayev, in which he proposed limiting the download of VPN services to the RuStore application store in case of non-compliance with Russian legislation “in terms of not providing access to the register of prohibited information.”

September 18 Roskomnadzor published a draft order that lists the criteria for blocking sites with information that allows access to resources prohibited in Russia. The reason for blocking may be a description of the advantages of services, methods and methods of access to them, as well as proposals for downloading special programs. The order may come into force on March 1, 2024 and will be in effect until September 1, 2029.

Later Shadayev reportedthat Russia does not plan to introduce liability for the use of blocked VPN services. September 6, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Technologies Alexander Khinshtein statedthat it is impossible to ban VPN services and hold anyone accountable for their use, since this will not solve the problem of the possible transfer of user data to third parties.

In March – July 2022 Russia occupied second place in the world in downloading VPN services: in the first three weeks of July last year, such services were installed more than 12 million times in the country. In December 2022 Shadayev statedthat VPN services are “not taking root” in Russia: the increased share of VPN traffic has returned to spring levels.