Second wave of internet outages hits Russia after attack on Yandex data center

Moscow, March 16, 2026. Russia is set to spend around 60 billion rubles over the next three years on internet traffic filtering, as the nation continues its decade-long effort to curb bypassing of online censorship. In 2017, Article 15⁸ was added to the "Information, Information Technologies, and Information Protection" law to tackle VPNs and other tools used to circumvent internet restrictions.

While VPN providers were not outright banned, they were required to filter traffic and block restricted resources, with telecommunications operators enforcing these rules. Penalties for non-compliance included blocking VPN services in Russia. In 2018, Roskomnadzor prohibited the posting of information on block notification pages, including news content and ways to bypass restrictions.

In 2019, the "sovereign internet" law was enacted, granting the government centralized control over the Russian internet segment and creating a center for monitoring and managing communication networks. The center was tasked with taking control of the internet in emergencies, and every telecommunications operator was mandated to install TSPU, or "technical means of countering threats," which enabled Roskomnadzor to filter traffic and block objectionable sites.

By October 2023, Roskomnadzor claimed that all communications nodes in Russia were "100% covered by TSPU." In 2021, threats against VPN services intensified, with individual providers being targeted and eventually restricted due to non-compliance with Russian legal requirements. Additionally, all instructions for bypassing internet blocks were banned in 2023, further restricting access to bypassing tools.