Technology

A new wave of blocks in Russia targets VPN apps and Cloudflare subnets

March 24, 2025

Russia’s Roskomnadzor has intensified internet blocks across the country
Google has reportedly received at least 47 removal request orders so far
Cloudflare subnets were also temorarily blocked, causing large-scale disruptions of major websites

Internet users in Russia have been suffering a new wave of online disruptions lately, with VPN apps and a major DNS server provider being the targets.

Starting March 12, 2025, Russia’s censor body Roskomnadzor has reportedly hit Google with at least 47 removal orders of some of the best VPN apps from its Google Play store.

A few days later, on March 20, Cloudflare subnets were also temporarily blocked. This causes large-scale outages across multiple Russian regions, with many popular websites going dark. Some VPN services also experienced connectivity issues due to the DNS blocking.

Digital rights experts across the country now fear that’s just the beginning of further blocks.

An ever-more restricted internet

Android and Windows users in Russia could soon be prevented from downloading almost 50 of the most popular VPN apps in an escalation of VPN censorship in the country. (Image credit: Photo Illustration by Idrees Abbas/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Roskomnadzor’s fight against VPN apps is nothing new but the scale of Russia’s VPN blocking efforts keeps intensifying.

So, while almost 200 VPNs are already blocked across the country, Roskomnadzor has presented Google with some new removal orders.

A Russian journalist has counted 47 new requests since March 12, with the likes of HideMyNetVPN, Proxy Shield VPN, and Secure VPN being among the targets. It isn’t yet clear if Google has already complied with such orders at the time of writing.

This new wave of VPN app removal from the Google Play Store follows the same modus operandi that has brought Apple to kill around 60 VPN apps from its App Store in Russia between July and September, bringing the total to 98 unavailable applications in the Big Tech giant’s official store.

The orders appear to have been issued under a law enforced in March last year, which criminalizes the spread of information about ways to circumvent internet restrictions – VPNs included.

Website outages were observed across Russia this week, with regulators attributing them to issues with foreign servers. Observers said the problems might be tied to Russian government moves to block Cloudflare services https://t.co/bd0gu5g2c1March 20, 2025

Russia’s latest crusade against VPN services came at the same time Cloudflare subnets (a group of over 500k IP addresses within the network) were also blocked across the eastern part of the country, from the Urals to Primorye.

Around 1.5 million IP addresses were impacted – a technical expert for Russian digital rights advocacy group Roskomsvoboda told TechRadar. The likes of TikTok, Steam, Twitch, Epic Games, DeepSeek, Duolingo, and mobile operator sites were all inaccessible without a VPN.

“VPN services have also experienced problems, as they often have their own management infrastructure linked to Cloudflare,” Roskomsvoboda told TechRadar, noting that Warp VPN, which is developed by Cloudflare, also stopped working.

Commenting to a Russian news agency, Roskomnadzor said officials “will conduct scheduled technical checks of the use of foreign server infrastructure by Russian services and telecom operators.”

While the incident has now been resolved, Roskomsvoboda experts warn that the long-term plan may be blocking Cloudflare completely as Iran did.

“Judging by the scale of these ‘exercises’, this may happen quite soon,” the expert told Techradar, explaining that all the mobile apps and online services relying on Cloudflare as a Content Delivery Network (CDN) could soon stop working.

We contacted Cloudflare for comment but are still waiting for a response at the time of publication.

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