Russia has gone further than any other large country in walling off its internet without quite finishing the job. Instagram, Facebook and X have been blocked since March 2022. Discord and Viber followed in 2024. YouTube has been throttled to near uselessness on many connections since 2024. Voice calls on WhatsApp and Telegram were restricted in 2025. Hundreds of foreign news sites are unreachable, and the websites of most VPN providers are blocked along with them.
The state has also come for the tools. Since 2017 only VPN services that agree to apply the national block list are permitted, and none of the well-known international ones agreed. Advertising or promoting VPNs became an offence in 2024. The national filtering equipment installed under the sovereign internet law inspects traffic and has, at various times since 2023, blocked the WireGuard and OpenVPN protocols themselves, so even a VPN that is installed may stop working for days.
Using a VPN has not been made illegal for individuals, and tens of millions do. The practical position is that it works most of the time, that the protocol matters more than the server, and that installing the app and signing in before the websites became unreachable is what separates the people who stay connected from those who do not.
GhostShield does not run servers in Russia. Limburg is the nearest fast exit for European content, and the full set of locations works for the rest.
International Privacy Standards
Internet freedom varies significantly by country. Organizations like Freedom House track global internet freedom annually, while the EU's GDPR has set new standards for data protection worldwide. Reporters Without Borders monitors press freedom and digital access restrictions globally.
A VPN helps you maintain consistent privacy protections regardless of which country you're browsing from, ensuring your data stays encrypted and your activity stays private.
The privacy landscape in Russia
The state is the entire threat model: a block list applied by every provider, inspection equipment that can target protocols as well as sites, a retention law that makes operators store connection records for years and message content for months, and prosecutions for online speech that have become common since 2022. A VPN protects the connection, not a post made under a real name.
The technical risk is protocol blocking. When the filtering equipment targets WireGuard, every WireGuard VPN in the country degrades at once; the blocks have come and gone over days and weeks. Keeping a second provider or protocol as backup is sensible.
Beyond the state, fraud against bank customers by phone and message is widespread. The tunnel keeps public Wi-Fi private; it does not vet a caller.
Top reasons people use a VPN in Russia
The everyday case is reaching the blocked platforms: Instagram, Facebook, X, Discord, a YouTube that plays, and messaging calls that connect. Any server outside the country restores them while the tunnel holds.
Students, professionals and businesses reach cloud services, developer tools and international news that the block list catches, and keep a clean connection on networks subject to the retention laws.
Russians abroad use the reverse direction less, since there is no Russian server; most domestic services, Yandex, VK, Rutube and Kinopoisk, stream internationally, with some titles limited to Russia.