Federation Council considers banning VPN services; no plan to impose liability for their use

Andrey Klishas, head of the Federation Council committee on constitutional legislation, did not rule out a ban on VPN services that enable bypassing blocks on resources banned in Russia. As reported by «RIA Novosti».

«A ban on resources that enable bypassing blocks is possible, but citizens’ responsibility for using such resources will not be imposed», he said.

Alexander Khinshtein, head of the State Duma committee on information policy, information technologies and communications, said that the initiative to restrict the use of VPN services is not currently being developed.

Russia has long been grappling with such services. In June last year, Roskomnadzor restricted access to VPN services VyprVPN and Opera VPN, and in September — to Hola!VPN, ExpressVPN, KeepSolid VPN Unlimited, Nord VPN, Speedify VPN and IPVanish VPN. In December the agency announced blocking Betternet, Lantern, X-VPN, Cloudflare WARP, Tachyon VPN and PrivateTunnel.

On March 4, Roskomnadzor blocked access to Facebook and Twitter, and from March 14 — to Instagram. A Moscow court found Meta to be an extremist organisation.

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