- Amnezia VPN has restored its Premium service in Russia
- Amnezia Free should return in the coming weeks
- Roskomnadzor blocked more than 90% of its local servers between June 1 and 15
Russian privacy provider Amnezia VPN has successfully restored its Premium service for users in the country, after suffering an unprecedented state-backed infrastructure strike.
Between June 1 and 15, millions of Amnezia users in Russia lost their connection after state censor Roskomnadzor (RKN) launched a multi-pronged offensive that blocked more than 90% of the provider’s local servers.
This strike represents a dramatic escalation in Moscow’s digital crackdown, deploying automated network fingerprinting and targeted cyberattacks to actively hunt down VPN infrastructure.
While the Premium tier is now back online with a newly updated stealthier protocol, Amnezia has confirmed that its Free tier’s Russian stack will return in the coming weeks.
For internet users stuck behind Russia’s “sovereign internet” firewall, the stakes have never been higher. Identifying the best VPN has become a critical lifeline for the free web as the state pours enormous resources into its censorship machine.
A sophisticated censorship machine worth $898 million
According to Amnezia’s incident analysis, Roskomnadzor abandoned basic blocking of IP addresses in favor of a highly automated and aggressive set of rules.
By analyzing network traffic, Russian authorities appear to have learned to identify the unique “network fingerprint” of specific VPN protocols – including Amnezia’s proprietary AmneziaWG protocol.
Once RKN’s Internet censorship and filtering system (known as TSPU) detects this fingerprint, it automatically blacklists the server’s IP address. During the June assault, Amnezia attempted to swap servers, but the new IP addresses were blocked within hours.
This technological leap is largely financed by the state. Forbes Russia and Kommersant estimate that almost 60 billion rubles (770 million) will be spent to strengthen the filtering system, while the Moscow Times projects a broader RKN budget allocation of 70 billion rubles (898 million) between 2026 and 2028.
To compound the technical assault, RKN combined its deep packet inspection with traditional hacking tactics, launching active DDoS attacks on VPN services. This wave of attacks even targeted the Amnezia site, while deploying phishing schemes against the provider’s staff.
Mazay Banzaev, founder of Amnezia VPN, believes that this escalation is proof that Roskomnadzor had been preparing a new set of rules for the TSPU for a long time and fully implemented them on June 1. He now hopes that these measures will be extended to other services operating in Russia.
“Such practices have also been used in other countries, for example, in Iran and China, but in Russia they have reached a new level of automation: on average, a server is blocked a few hours after users start connecting to it,” Banzaev said.
Bounce back with better security
Despite the severity of the attack, Amnezia confirmed that no infrastructure was breached and user data remained secure, crediting regular security audits carried out by independent cybersecurity firm 7ASecurity.
To circumvent the new TSPU ruleset, Amnezia has abandoned a new version of its AmneziaWG protocol. This update removes the specific functionality that allowed censors to identify VPN traffic in the first place. Users must update their AmneziaVPN client to restore their connection, as the provider intentionally disabled older, vulnerable versions of the app to avoid repeat attacks.
To compensate for the downtime, Amnezia also compensates affected users. Premium subscribers with a 6-month plan will receive an additional month of service, while those with a 12-month plan will receive an additional two months.
The provider is now targeting future expansion, noting that interest in circumventing state censorship continues to grow globally. Amnezia plans to expand its network to 100 sites while developing new open source methods to thwart censors.
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