The Russian government has taken major steps to create a heavily restricted Internet for its citizens, announcing the ban of nine VPN providers within the month. Russia’s telecommunications regulation agency, Roskomnadzor, wrote to ten VPN companies, asking them to link their servers to government-run IT systems.
Thankfully, nine of the ten providers asked refused to do so. This means ExpressVPN, HideMyAss!, Hola VPN, IPVanish, KeepSolid, NordVPN, OpenVPN, TorGuard, and VyprVPN will all be blocked in due time. The one VPN which accepted Roskomnadzor’s demands was Kaspersky, who themselves were banned by the US government for suspected ties to the Russian government.
