Russia will block nine VPN providers imminently

Back in March, the Kremlin's communication watchdog, Roskomnadzor, sent out letters to 10 VPN providers informing them that their services would soon be blocked in Russia unless they complied with local laws.

Now the head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov has revealed that the country will block nine of the VPN services within the next month.

In an interview with the Russian news agency Interfax, Zharov explained that only one of the 10 companies had taken steps to comply with the country's laws, saying:

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"We sent out ten notifications of VPNs. Only one of them - Kaspersky Secure Connection connected to the registry. All the others did not answer, moreover, they wrote on their websites that they would not comply with Russian law. And the law says unequivocally if the company refuses to comply with the law - it should be blocked. So, we will do it in some time.

If the companies fail to take action to comply with Russian law, they will be entered in the register of prohibited information.

Federal State Information System

Roskomnadzor informed NordVPN, Hide My ASS!, Hola VPN, Openvpn, VyprVPN, ExpressVPN, TorGuard, IPVAnish, VPN Unlimited and Kaspersky Secure Connection that they would have to connect their services to the Federal State Information System (FGIS) in March.

FGIS contains a register of information prohibited in Russia and by connecting their services to the system, the customers of these companies would be unable to access blocked content even with a VPN.

Once the block goes into effect sometime in the next month, Kaspersky Secure Connection will be the only major VPN provider that will legally be allowed to operate in Russia.