Jan 23, 2024 23:00:00

Many Russian users report their experiences on social news sites about the Russian government's shutdown of VPN services

Russia has strengthened censorship in the internet space since it began its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and access to

SNS such as X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram and some web services has been blocked. I am. On January 21, 2024, a user living in Russia posted on the social news site Hacker News that ``The Russian government has strengthened the blocking of VPN services,'' and many users living in Russia began sharing their own experiences. and opinions have been received.

Tell HN: Russia has started blocking OpenVPN/WireGuard connections | Hacker News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39067213

Access to various Western services has been blocked in Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, but some people are using VPN services to get around the block. However, as a Russian senatorsaid , ``From March 1, 2024, an order to block VPN services that provide access to sites prohibited in Russia will come into effect,'' and VPN services are becoming increasingly popular in Russia. There are also concerns that it may become unusable.

Meanwhile, itvision, a Hacker News user living in Russia, said, ``For the past three days, Russians have been unable to use VPN services that operate via the OpenVPN / WireGuard protocol, and SSH connections have stopped working under certain circumstances.'' Some people have reported that the prospect of an 'orphaned Russian Internet' has become very real. As someone who currently lives in Russia, I have been unable to connect to my favorite VPN service for the past three days and have been unable to connect to it using the official app. I can confirm that it doesn't even work. I haven't seen any discussion of this issue on the English-speaking internet. Despite its importance in protecting freedom of information and expression, for some reason it doesn't make it into the news. It's not happening,' he posted .

As a result, many users living in Russia shared their own experiences and opinions. 'Here, the Russian government has long blocked all

WireGuard connections , but OpenVPN has It appears to be selectively blocked. I 'm sure the government and commercial world need OpenVPN more than WireGuard.' In Donbas, there is no consistent response to VPN services, and the hosts and timing of blocking vary depending on the ISP, suggesting that Donbas is an experimental environment for Russian censorship.

MrDisposable, a Russian citizen living in Russia,

reports that his paid VPN provider stopped working a few months ago, and since then, his self-hosted Outline server and OpenVPN have also stopped working. Both of the VPNs that no longer work were hosted by Digital Ocean in Frankfurt, and at the time of writing they said they were using the self-hosted Outline running on servers in the United States, which has also been around for a long time. says it won't last.

In response to

the question ``How are you paying for a VPS (virtual private server) in the EU despite being subject to sanctions?'' Mr. I answered that I am using a personal bank account. People who do not have a bank account in another country are asking friends and acquaintances who have already emigrated to pay for a VPS abroad in exchange for providing the rubles they need to pay their mortgage or help their relatives in Russia. It seems that they have formed a cooperative relationship of 'receive and receive.'

In addition, MrDisposable was looking for a VPN service to replace Outline at the time of his first post, but later wrote, ``I installed AmneziaVPN on my VPS, and so far it's working well and fast. '' Did .

While there are posts that agree with itvision's report, there are also users living in Russia who claim that they have not been in a similar situation. One user wrote, 'I don't believe that to be true. The Russian government may block commercial solutions, but I'm currently using WireGuard which makes the Netherlands an exit point and it works fine. It's working,' another user replied , saying they didn't notice any problems. However, when I asked some of my friends, some of them said they were having problems with their VPN service, and it seems that the problem is not the protocol itself being blocked, but the combination of the protocol and the 'suspicious server'. I pointed out that there was.

Additionally, a person writing from Moscow via OpenVPN

reported that he traveled throughout Russia in 2023 and did not experience any blocking at the protocol level.

The reported tightening of VPN services may be related to the large-scale demonstrations calling for the release of political activists that occurred on January 17 in the Republic of Bashkortostan in southwestern Russia. Comments were also received.

Demonstrations demanding the release of activists expand in southwestern Russia, as thousands of crowds clash with police...unprecedented since the start of the invasion: Yomiuri Shimbun
https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/world/20240118-OYT1T50232/