- Russia Roskomnadzor published 212 VPN blocking orders against Google Play between March and April 2025
- On these targeted VPNs, only 6 applications are not available on the country’s app store
- On the other hand, Apple was found to have killed at least 60 VPN applications in 2024 only at the request of Roskomnadzor
Russia’s body of Censur of Russia, Roskomnadzor, published 212 VPN blocking orders against Google between March and April 2025. Among these, however, only 6 applications seemed to have been deleted so far, bearing the total of VPN services unavailable on Google Play Store of Russia at 53.
Russian investigation journalist Maria Kolomychenko discovered for the first time that Google had received at least 47 VPN dismissal orders from some of the best VPN applications from March 12. After this revelation, researchers from the Greatfire Appcensorhip project began to analyze the availability of 399 VPN applications, revealing that Roskomnadzor has really targeted 212 VPN type tools.
Greatfire’s conclusions show an escalation in the Kremlin War against VPNs. Unlike Apple, however, which killed at least 60 VPN applications on Roskomnadzor’s request in only 2024, Google seems to have resisted most Russian VPN blocking requests so far.
214 requests for deletion targeting 212 VPN
Roskomnadzor’s struggle against VPN applications is certainly nothing new. However, as the campaign and the director of advocacy of Greatfire, Benjamin Ismail: “The Russian government puts a total war against VPNs and all the other tools allowing Russian citizens to circumvent censorship and surveillance.”
More specifically, Greatfire recorded a total of 214 moving orders issued against Google between March 12 and April 1, 2025. Among these, 212 target virtual private network (VPN) and similar applications such as VPN customer and proxy tools.
Several of these requests were issued under a law applied in March of last year, which criminalizes the dissemination of information on the means of bypassing restrictions on the Internet – VPN included. However, the use of a VPN is not a crime in Russia.
As mentioned earlier, Google seems to have largely resistred the Russian censorship request so far. Greatfire noted, in fact, that only 6 of the VPNs targeted by the latest wave of Roskomnadzor requests are not currently available in the Play Store. These include Popular ExpressVPN service.
In total, 53 VPN services were unavailable on the Google Play Store in Russia. These include NordVPN, Cyberghost, Private Internet access (PIA) and Astrill VPN.
Popular applications like Proton VPN, Mullvad and Amnezia VPN remain accessible via Google Play stores in the country at the time of writing.
Interestingly, however, the researchers found inconsistencies with the own requests for withdrawal from Roskomnadzor, which in several cases targeted the VPN applications which had already been deleted.
ExpressVPN is an example, because it seems to have been unavailable on Google Play of Russia at least for some time between March and September 2024.
Another challenge is to determine when an application has been deleted as well as the exact reason for its unavailability. For example, Avast VPN confirmed in a blog article the company’s decision to stop operations in Russia after the Ukraine War. More developers may also have been forced by the government to leave the country’s application stores.
However, according to Ismail, this does not mean that censorship is absent.
He told Techradar: “self -censorship is always censorship: it is just a more indirect and systemic form, rather than a formal withdrawal. And if, in the end, it was the only decision of the developer to withdraw the application as part of a broader withdrawal from the Russian market, we regret such a choice.”
APPCENSHIP now requests greater independent surveillance and transparency of technological platforms.
You can check the full list of unavailable VPNs on Google Play here. If you are in Russia and you find it difficult to download your desired VPN, we recommend that you modify the location of your App Store store or, on Android, to find alternative download options.
