Kremlin's war on the global web turned VPNs into Russia's new national utility, study finds

• Russians consider VPNs an essential domestic utility, RKS Global says
• Community groups promoting shared use of VPNs are growing
• Users also rely on multiple VPNs to counter regular crackdowns

Russian citizens are increasingly viewing VPNs as a regular line item in their household bills as they create new forms of cooperation to counter censorship, a recent study by Eurasian digital rights organisation RKS Global has found.

Recent laws restricting internet freedoms, along with intensified crackdowns that recently disrupted dozens of circumvention tools, are turning the best VPNs into an essential domestic utility, as citizens treat their costs as essential as mobile internet and routine bills such as electricity and gas.

Against a backdrop of constant outages in Russia's mobile infrastructure — leaving the population in constant fear of unpredictable “digital darkness” — citizens are also banding together in solidarity groups to boost ways to circumvent the country's blocking measures.

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The study drew on focus groups made up of ordinary users, civic activists, and Amnezia VPN’s head of user support to analyse the online behaviour of VPN users in Russia and their attitudes towards censorship.

The findings suggest that people are forming a variety of small and large mutual-aid networks when making cybersecurity decisions, starting with which virtual private network (VPN) tool to use.

Furthermore, VPN users are happy to act as nodes to help spread the service, sharing keys with relatives and loved ones to create a shared infrastructure that connects multiple devices to a single VPN account and allows an entire family to access it.

Some have created cooperatives of dozens of people, connecting family members and personal contacts in exchange for a subscription fee that covers server costs.

Manzay Banzaev, founder of Amnezia VPN, tells TechRadar these solutions are indeed widely used by self-hosters who have set up their own VPN servers using its free open-source app.

"While using the application is becoming more difficult due to the specific challenges of operating in a region with a high level of attacks on VPN services, these users continue to make effective use of it, establishing a connection with the outside world not only for themselves but also for their loved ones," he adds.

A crumbling infrastructure

The study also highlighted a challenging scenario where users are forced to use several VPNs simultaneously, as they must be constantly prepared to switch from one service to another when one stops working.

It's becoming increasingly hard for users to understand if a block is caused by the government, an outage, a VPN malfunction, or general connection issues, leading to increasing frustration and a sense of degradation of the digital environment.

Banzaev, whose VPN recently improved its anti-censorship protocol against smarter censorship tactics, says: "The endless search for working tools, switching between them, periods of downtime and waiting for 'when everything will work again' are also becoming routine.”

He also notes the quality of telecoms services is getting worse while prices have increased by up to 40 per cent over the last couple of years. "All of this is having a significant impact on the expenses of Russian families who, regardless of all the restrictions and sanctions, wish to use foreign messaging apps, social media and content platforms, and are forced to pay for solutions that allow them to do so — in particular VPNs," he explains.

Despite this, informants confirmed that blocking is perceived as "universally negative" with users unwilling to give up circumventing it, and only a drastic tightening of the law — such as prison sentences for using a VPN — or the complete lifting of the blocks would attenuate its use.

In short, if the Russian authorities believe increased blocking and crackdowns on circumvention tools are being effective, they may not have realised they might be pushing users towards increasingly decentralised, community-run networks that are far harder to disrupt.

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