Developments in Internet censorship in Russia

In her article „Shutting down the net: The growing threat of Russian Internet censorship“, from January 22, 2025, ZeMKI member Dr. Daria Dergacheva sums up the latest developments in Internet censorship in Russia.

The article’s main points in short:

• Russia’s Internet penetration is quite high: in 2023, the same as in Germany, 92% of population uses Internet
• Russia is technically almost ready to create Turkmenistan’s model of “whitelists” of the Internet, when only IP addresses included on the list are allowed to be accessed
• Russia, theoretically, can now also implement North Korean model at any time (no external Internet traffic at all)
• All western platforms are blocked by now (YouTube was the last one standing but blocked in Dec. 2024), as well as messengers Viber, Discord, and Signal
• Telegram still works (no one knows for how long), WhatsApp works (but is next in line for being blocked)
• According to some estimates, over 50% of the population uses VPNs
• Apple deleted over 100 VPN applications (and some opposition media apps) from its App store, following the Russian government demands
• Civil society and opposition media are providing VPNs and other mechanisms to circumvent the censorship but not everything can be bypassed

You can read the full article here: