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On August 4, 2026 more than 20 popular VPN services stopped working in Russia at once, among them VPN Generator, VPN Legend, GaMMa VPN, LTVPN, ABS and FoxyBot (Euronews, 05.08.2026). A second wave came after the State Duma elections: from September 21 at least 10 services reported new restrictions, with outages peaking on September 25 (Meduza, 29.09.2026). The main reason is a change of tactics: instead of individual servers, entire subnets of hosting providers where VPNs are concentrated are now being blocked.
This is a breakdown of the news and the mechanics. If you need to fix your VPN right now, step-by-step diagnostics are in the article why a VPN doesn't work and how to fix it.
In summer 2026 the services hit hardest were those whose servers sat with the same large hosting providers. The Euronews and Meduza list of August 5: VPN Generator, VPN Legend, GaMMa VPN, LTVPN, ABS, FoxyBot, Paper VPN. Some services moved to backup servers, and for some a change of location helped.
After the elections the picture changed. According to Meduza on September 29, one service replaced eight servers in five days, and two others had all their foreign locations and IP addresses blocked. The names of these services are not disclosed.
The August and September wave was a continuation of measures introduced throughout the year. VPN Guild chairman Alexey Kozlyuk says the pressure intensified back in early August, and September was a gradual escalation of the same campaign (Meduza, 29.09.2026).
| Date | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| March 27–28 | Happ, v2RayTun, V2Box, Streisand removed from the Russian App Store at Roskomnadzor's request | Kod Durova, 28.03.2026 |
| April 15 | Deadline by which the Ministry of Digital Development required major services to restrict access for VPN users | TASS via Klerk, 02.04.2026 |
| May | Roskomnadzor fined 85 telecom operators that failed to hand over IP address data | Meduza citing Izvestia, 26.05.2026 |
| August 4 | More than 20 VPNs stopped working, blocks by hosting subnets | Euronews, 05.08.2026 |
| August 31 | Ministry of Digital Development asked hosting providers and CDNs to move "whitelist" sites into separate subnets | Vedomosti, 31.08.2026 |
| September 21–25 | New wave after the State Duma elections, at least 10 services reported outages | Meduza, 29.09.2026 |
The money for this is budgeted too: the draft 2027 budget allocates 19.87 billion rubles to the system that manages TSPU, versus the previously planned 9.87 billion (The Moscow Times, 01.10.2026).
Roskomnadzor gave no official explanation, and the timing of the waves coincided with the State Duma elections. Leonid Volkov called the August wave the largest attack on independent VPNs and linked it to the elections (Euronews, 05.08.2026). This is an assessment, not a confirmed fact.
The address databases were apparently collected in advance. An IT lawyer quoted by Meduza on August 5 suggests two routes: Russian apps that have been detecting users' VPNs since April, and buying paid accounts from the VPN services themselves. In addition, in March Roskomnadzor required 1,359 operators to hand over information about IP addresses; according to an Izvestia source, this data helps determine whether a subscriber has a VPN on. Roskomnadzor explains the collection as protection against DDoS attacks.
Three mechanisms now work at the same time: blocking by address, protocol recognition and whitelists on mobile internet. Different things help against each, so the same VPN may work at home and not work in the metro.
1. Blocking by IP and subnets. Previously the address of a specific server was blocked. Since August, according to Mikhail Klimarev of the Internet Protection Society, they find the autonomous systems where VPNs cluster and close all their prefixes entirely (Euronews, 05.08.2026). No protocol helps here. Ordinary websites get caught too: AppleInsider.ru wrote on September 30 about partial unavailability of resources at Selectel, Beget and Timeweb and about outages of corporate VPNs.
2. Protocol recognition. The TSPU system with deep packet inspection (DPI) looks at the start of a connection. WireGuard and OpenVPN are recognized by their characteristic packets. For VLESS, Teplitsa of Social Technologies described subtler checks on September 30: whether the site name in the TLS hello matches the real server, whether the traffic resembles a real browser, and whether the server behaves like an ordinary website if the filter itself connects to it.
3. Whitelists on mobile internet. When this mode is on in a region, the carrier lets through only allowed resources and cuts everything else. Here it doesn't matter which VPN you have: a foreign server simply isn't on the list. More: does a VPN help when mobile internet is shut off.
Services whose traffic looks like ordinary HTTPS and that have many servers spread across different hosting providers hold out longer. Nobody can guarantee "this VPN won't be blocked".
| What the service has | Against IP blocking | Against protocol recognition | Under whitelists |
|---|---|---|---|
| WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2 without camouflage | goes down with the subnet | recognized by packets | doesn't work |
| Few servers with one hosting provider | goes down entirely at once | depends on the protocol | doesn't work |
| HTTPS camouflage (VLESS + Reality and similar) | goes down if the subnet is closed | gets through more often, but checks are getting harder | doesn't work |
| Large server pool across different hosting providers + camouflage | some servers are lost, the rest remain available | gets through more often | doesn't work |
Camouflage protects against recognition; the number and spread of servers protect against address blocking. Neither helps against a whitelist. How camouflage works: Reality and VLESS in plain words.
First find out what exactly broke: a specific server, the whole service or the connection on mobile.
If Russian services don't open with a VPN, that's a separate story: how apps detect a VPN.
Services are blocked, users are not punished: at the time of publication, private individuals in Russia are not prohibited from using a VPN. The authors of the July 2025 amendments said directly that there is no fine for simply using a VPN (Interfax, 22.07.2025). But since September 1, 2025 there's a fine of 3 to 5 thousand rubles for deliberately searching for materials from the extremist list, and advertising tools for bypassing blocks is prohibited. An article-by-article breakdown: is a VPN legal in Russia.
BessyConnect is built on VLESS with Reality camouflage: to a network filter the connection looks like ordinary HTTPS. That's the answer to protocol recognition. The answer to address blocking is a pool of more than 100 servers: if one is unavailable, you can switch to another. No logs, registration isn't required, there's no device limit, and there's a trial period so you can check how it works with your provider before paying.
The app isn't in the Russian App Store: to install it on iPhone in Russia you need an Apple ID from another country.
An honest limit. BessyConnect doesn't work when the mobile carrier has turned on whitelists or the internet is shut off completely. An individual server may fall under a subnet block, and then you need to switch to another. A VPN doesn't change your app store region and doesn't solve paying with foreign cards.
Which VPNs were blocked in Russia in 2026? On August 4, 2026 VPN Generator, VPN Legend, GaMMa VPN, LTVPN, ABS, FoxyBot, Paper VPN and more than a dozen other services stopped working (Euronews and Meduza, 05.08.2026). In September at least 10 services reported new outages.
Why did VPNs stop working in August 2026? According to Euronews and Meduza, instead of individual servers, entire subnets of the hosting providers where VPNs sit began to be blocked. Services with servers in those subnets went offline simultaneously.
Are the VPN blocks linked to the elections? The new wave began on September 21, right after the State Duma elections, and some experts also linked the August wave to the elections. Roskomnadzor has not officially confirmed this link.
Which VPN isn't blocked? There isn't one. Services with HTTPS camouflage and many servers across different hosting providers hold out longer, but they also lose individual addresses, and under whitelists on mobile no VPN works.
Will VPN blocking continue? Judging by the 2027 budget, yes: funding for the TSPU management system is almost doubling (The Moscow Times, 01.10.2026).
A VPN smart TV owners can actually use: BessyConnect's Android TV app runs right on your television — VLESS+Reality, 100+ servers, controlled with the remote. More
