Russia Doubles Its Censorship Budget for 2027 and Targets 92% VPN Blocking by 2030

Russia is about to double the money it spends on blocking the internet. Revised budget drafts show the country plans to spend 19.87 billion rubles (about $235 million) in 2027 on the system that filters Russian traffic, up from 9.87 billion in the earlier plan. The stated goal is to block VPNs with 92% efficiency by 2030. Here’s what was announced, what’s still only a proposal, and what it changes for people who rely on a VPN in Russia.

What was reported

TechRadar reported on October 6, citing budget drafts first reported by the independent outlet Verstka and The Moscow Times, that the 2027 allocation for Russia’s filtering system had been revised from 9.87 billion to 19.87 billion rubles. The figures were picked up the next day by Mysterium VPN’s news desk and DigitalToday.

The key numbers:

What the money pays for

The budget line covers what Russia calls the “Automated System for Ensuring the Security of the Internet,” or ASBI. It controls the TSPU boxes that every Russian ISP has to install on its network. TSPU is deep packet inspection hardware: it looks at the shape of your traffic, not just where it’s going, and can block or slow down anything that looks like a VPN protocol.

More money means more boxes, more capacity and more staff to write detection rules. The 954 Tbit/s target is about handling all of Russia’s traffic in real time, including the growing share that’s encrypted.

We explained how TSPU recognises VPN traffic in our article on Russia’s VPN detection methods.

From blocking to “suffocating”

One quote in TechRadar’s piece stands out. Sergei Shcherbakov, technical director at Stakhanovets, said operators “have accumulated enough statistics to move from total blocks to targeted suffocation of quality.”

In plain terms: instead of cutting VPNs off completely, which tells users to switch provider, the system degrades them. Pages load slowly, video stutters, connections drop every few minutes. Users give up without ever seeing a “blocked” message. That’s harder to measure from outside, and harder for VPN providers to diagnose.

Two proposals aimed directly at VPNs

Neither of these is law yet, and both are worth watching.

A 5G international traffic fee. Officials are discussing a charge for mobile users who use more than 50 GB of international traffic a month on 5G, according to Kommersant via TechRadar. Meduza reported on September 23 that an earlier version, proposed in March, set the threshold at 15 GB, and that neither a start date nor an amount had been fixed. Operators reportedly can’t yet tell 5G and LTE international traffic apart in real time, which complicates the whole idea. The target is obvious: VPN traffic leaves the country, so it counts as international.

“Anti-Fraud 3.0” and hosting. A proposed package would bar Russian hosting providers, for up to a year, from serving clients who host VPNs or proxies listed on a Roskomnadzor registry. Hosts would also have to verify who their clients are and what servers are used for. Many homemade and smaller VPN services run on cheap Russian or nearby servers; this rule targets exactly them.

How 2026 got here

This budget didn’t come out of nowhere. Over the past six months, Russia has tightened the screws from several directions at once:

• In April, major Russian platforms like Ozon and Kinopoisk started blocking visitors who connect through a VPN, moving enforcement from the network to the apps themselves. We covered that shift in Russia’s VPN crackdown changes tactics.
• Apple removed several VPN and proxy apps from the Russian App Store, as reported in our July article.
• In July, the Digital Development Ministry said it would not charge users for VPN traffic after all, as we reported in Russia scraps its VPN traffic tax. The 5G fee now under discussion shows that idea is back on the table in a narrower form.
• On August 4, Roskomnadzor blocked more than 20 VPN services at once by targeting hosting providers’ IP ranges.

The hosting angle links August’s operation to the new “Anti-Fraud 3.0” proposal. If Russia can’t reliably detect every VPN protocol, it can make it harder to rent the servers VPNs run on.

What VPN providers are doing

Darbinyan told TechRadar that providers are “upgrading their protocols, adopting new traffic obfuscation methods” and building alternative apps to replace the ones removed from app stores. In practice, that means protocols that imitate ordinary HTTPS or video traffic, frequent rotation of server IP addresses, and distribution through websites and messaging channels rather than only through official stores.

What this means if you use a VPN in Russia

Honestly, nothing changes overnight. The budget is for 2027, the 92% target is for 2030, and the fee and hosting ban are proposals. But the direction is clear, and it builds on this summer’s crackdown, covered in Russia’s largest VPN crackdown.

Practical takeaways:

Obfuscation is no longer optional. Standard OpenVPN and plain WireGuard are the easiest protocols for DPI to spot. You need a VPN with obfuscated servers or a protocol designed to look like normal HTTPS traffic.

Have a backup. Sarkis Darbinyan of RKS Global and the VPN Guild told TechRadar that no public VPN is guaranteed to stay accessible from Russia. Keep a second provider or protocol installed and tested before you need it.

Install apps before you travel. Several VPN apps have been removed from Russian app stores. If you’re visiting, set everything up at home.

Watch your mobile data. If the 5G fee goes ahead, heavy VPN use on mobile data could become more expensive. Wi-Fi at home or in the office avoids the issue.

Russians aren’t the only ones affected

Travellers, foreign workers and companies with offices in Russia are hit by the same filtering. Business VPNs that connect staff to a company network use protocols that TSPU can also degrade, and foreign visitors often find that the VPN they use at home doesn’t connect at all. If you need to travel to Russia for work, talk to your company’s IT team before you go, and assume that whatever works today may not work next month.

Want to compare all VPNs side by side? Check our full VPN comparison table with scores across 18 criteria.

Which VPNs stand a chance

In our database, the criterion that matters here is “bypassing restrictive networks,” which scores support for obfuscated servers, Shadowsocks, Tor integration and dedicated IPs. NordVPN, Mullvad, Private Internet Access and Astrill VPN all score 4/5 on it.

NordVPN combines that 4/5 with obfuscated servers, NordWhisper, a Panama jurisdiction and the top overall score in our table (4.63/5). It isn’t immune to blocking; nobody is. Our best VPN for Russia guide keeps track of which providers still connect.

The bigger picture

Russia isn’t the only country moving this way, but it’s the one putting the most money on the table. For VPN providers, the next few years will be an arms race between better obfuscation and better detection. For users, the best defence is not relying on a single app.