Russian authorities are designing a financial mechanism that would effectively kill VPN use among ordinary citizens - not by banning the technology outright, but by making it prohibitively expensive. According to Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service, the plan involves charging mobile users roughly two dollars per gigabyte of international internet traffic. Since VPNs route connections through servers outside Russia, nearly all VPN activity would trigger this premium rate automatically.
The Architecture of Exclusion
The pricing strategy reflects a broader pattern in how authoritarian states manage information access: rather than enforcing outright prohibitions, which generate visible resistance, they create economic friction. A $2-per-gigabyte charge may seem modest in isolation, but for a typical user who streams video, browses social media, or simply reads foreign news through a VPN, costs would accumulate fast. The goal, as Ukrainian intelligence analysts describe it, is not to stop the technically determined few - it is to cut off the tens of millions of ordinary Russians who currently depend on VPNs as a routine part of online life.
Russia currently blocks approximately 4.7 million websites. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X have all been unavailable since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Telegram was blocked on April 10 of this year, with officials citing criminal use as justification while simultaneously promoting MAX, a government-sanctioned messaging alternative. The 65 million Russian users of Telegram largely turned to VPNs as the obvious workaround. That workaround is now the target.
Alexei Kozlyuk of the VPN Guild association estimates that around 60 million Russians know how to use a VPN. A 2025 survey by the Institute of Social Marketing found that 46 percent of respondents had used one at least once. Some analyses place Russia second globally for VPN adoption, with roughly 37.6 percent of internet users relying on the tools regularly. These figures represent not a niche technical community but a significant portion of the country's connected population - precisely the constituency the proposed charges are designed to deter.
Consolidating the Infrastructure of Control
The pricing plan is only one part of a larger restructuring. The proposed reforms would also radically increase the cost of operating as an internet service provider. Currently, a basic license costs around $134. Under the new framework, that rises to approximately $66,000 for a basic license and over $1.3 million for a general one. The number of license categories would be reduced from 17 to just three.
Ukrainian intelligence analysts conclude that more than 90 percent of Russia's approximately 4,200 internet operators would be unable to survive under these conditions. They would either shut down or be absorbed by larger entities. The result would be a market effectively controlled by a small number of companies with well-documented ties to the Russian state. This is not incidental - concentrated ownership of telecommunications infrastructure is a standard tool for governments seeking to control what citizens can access and what security services can monitor.
Accelerating that monitoring capacity is another explicit element of the plan. Authorities intend to speed up the deployment of SORM - a technical system that gives the FSB, Russia's domestic intelligence agency, direct access to internet traffic in real time. SORM has existed in various forms for decades, but expanded ISP consolidation makes its implementation both simpler and more comprehensive.
Apps as Surveillance Instruments
The infrastructure-level changes are accompanied by a parallel development at the application layer. Research conducted by RKS Global, an internet freedom organization, examined 30 widely used Russian apps - including those from T-Bank, Sberbank, Yandex, and VKontakte. The findings were stark: 22 of the 30 apps actively check whether a user has a VPN installed or running on their device. Most store this information server-side, where it is accessible to security services.
Mazay Banzaev, the founder of Amnezia, an open-source VPN project, drew a meaningful distinction in comments to The Guardian. There is a difference, he noted, between an app detecting VPN use at the moment someone visits a particular site, and an app that continuously scans the device for any VPN presence - regardless of what the user is doing. The latter behavior, which the RKS Global research documented, transforms ordinary software into a passive surveillance instrument. "Any Android app released by Russian companies for the Russian market may now be spying," the organization stated in its report.
What emerges from these overlapping measures is a system designed for depth and redundancy. Price barriers reduce the number of people who attempt to use VPNs at all. ISP consolidation concentrates traffic through fewer, more controllable nodes. SORM provides the FSB with direct technical access. And app-level scanning identifies users who persist despite the financial and technical obstacles. No single measure achieves total control. Together, they are designed to make independent internet access the exception rather than the norm.
What Follows From Here
Mobile operators have reportedly requested a delay until at least September 1 before the international traffic charges take effect, suggesting the implementation timeline remains in flux. But the direction is clear. Russia is methodically constructing what Ukrainian intelligence has described as a "digital ghetto" - a domestic internet environment where access to outside information is expensive, surveilled, and increasingly confined to those with the technical sophistication and financial resources to circumvent multiple layers of restriction.
The broader implication for the estimated 60 million Russians who currently use or know how to use VPNs is a narrowing of practical options. Some will find ways around the new barriers. Many will not. And for those who abandon VPNs under economic pressure, the version of the internet that remains will be one shaped almost entirely by state-approved sources, state-approved platforms, and state-approved narratives.