Across the regions, mobile internet was cut off again “for security reasons,” and we lived through another attack — only recently did our technical team restore Amnezia VPN to working order.
Against this backdrop, the July digest is once again built on data from open sources.
Just like in June, we cover news from around the world separately — stay on top of global trends in internet blocking and censorship
The Attack on Amnezia VPN — the Standoff Continues
In the first half of July, we were bringing Amnezia Premium back to working order after two repeat incidents. The attacks affected only users in Russia; the data is safe. As of publication, our working hypothesis is a targeted attack on the AmneziaWG protocol and an attempt to disrupt our network infrastructure.
In response to the ongoing attacks, we released Amnezia VPN 5.0.0.5. In it, we streamlined the interface, sorted out the work with system tools for a number of operating systems, and simplified connection setup.
The Happ App Disappears from the Russian App Store Again
On July 7, the Happ VPN service was removed from the Russian App Store for the third time this year. According to the developers, once again at the demand of Roskomnadzor. The app had already returned under a changed name after the March removal and yet another one in June.
Outages at Foreign Services
Gaming Projects
Early in the month, users had trouble accessing Electronic Arts’ online services — in particular, the servers for Battlefield 6, EA Sports FC 26, and The Sims 4. There was no official comment from the company, and Roskomnadzor representatives were quick to claim that the blocking was not tied to the agency.
The problem coincided with a block on access to the Amazon CloudFront CDN service. It speeds up the loading of content — images, video, APIs, and websites. Users reported outages with it at the same time, but here too Roskomnadzor denied any involvement.
Around July 15 and 16, users complained about problems loading Blizzard titles — Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and other games — as well as the Battle.net service. There was no access even from Turkish, Ukrainian, and other accounts. As of publication, the Detector404 service describes the volume of complaints about the service as “moderate.”
The t.me Block
On Tuesday, July 14, the t.me domain owned by Telegram stopped working worldwide. It’s used to create short links to messages in the service. External links stopped working, and the domain was frozen in the WHOIS registry.
The operator of the .me domain zone, Identity Digital, explained the domain’s suspension by an OFACOffice of Foreign Assets Control compliance review of t.me. In less than a day, the domain was back up.
The t.me block coincided with U.S. sanctions against First VPN. In the view of the U.S. Justice Department and State Department, the service’s creators acted as accomplices in attacks on American agencies, hospitals, schools, and private businesses.
Other Sites and Apps
Also mid-month, Runet users saw outages at several foreign services: GitHub, Google, and Apple’s site. Roskomnadzor, as usual, denied any involvement. The problems with Apple recurred a week later, when the company’s site became unavailable and some users couldn’t use the App Store without a VPN.
A week later, on July 22, user conversations with the Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek turned up in Google Search. The culprit was the “Share” feature — the search engine could index chat contents if privacy settings for public links were not strict enough. The service’s representatives urge users to delete such links in the Settings → Data section.
How Russian Services Glitched and What Measures Were Introduced in Crisis Situations
On July 9, at Chelyabinsk’s Gagarin Park, visitors couldn’t buy tickets for rides at the reduced prices available only online. According to eyewitnesses, the administration applied the standard rate to all tickets — at that point the internet connection had not recovered after the blocking prompted by missile danger.
On July 15, thousands of Russians complained about outages in the T-Bank app. The company acknowledged the problem and restored access within a few hours. The bank’s representatives did not specify the source of the problems.
That same day, the authorities of Zabaykalsky Krai rolled out QR codes at gas stations to create an electronic queue system for drivers. To start, the system will be tested at one of the stations in Chita. A statement from the agency on the MAX messenger indicates that drivers will be able to get the codes only through the national messenger. Officials are counting on the impossibility of reselling QR codes tied to MAX accounts, and assure the public that the system “will ensure a fair distribution of fuel.”
A week later, on July 22, users noted outages in the Platon system for long-haul truckers.
On Friday, July 24, for nearly a full day the Detector404 site received complaints about Rostelecom’s IP telephony.
At the same time, residents of the Chelyabinsk, Samara, Sverdlovsk, and Volgograd regions and the Republic of Karelia complained about outages at VK Video. According to the comments, both the service as a whole and the app were down.
Internet Restrictions Tied to Security Measures
In nearly every region, the authorities blocked the internet at one point or another — probably amid the declared drone- and missile-danger regimes:
- Chelyabinsk Oblast — July 1, 6, 27, 30, and 31.
- Sverdlovsk Oblast — July 1, 7–8, 27, and 31.
- Volgograd Oblast — July 1 and 7–8.
- Penza Oblast — three times: July 4, 7–8, and 12, twice with restrictions on airport operations.
- Saint Petersburg — July 4 and 24. Also, on Navy Day, July 26, mobile internet went out in the center of the Northern Capital under a “whitelist” regime. Notably, the blocking coincided with a visit by the president of Russia.
- Kurgan Oblast — three times on July 6: at 9:50, 11:25, and 13:40 local time.
- Omsk Oblast — July 6.
- Astrakhan Oblast — July 7–8 and 12.
- Perm Krai — July 7–8, 24, 27, and 31.
- Saratov Oblast — July 4. The internet was restricted and Gagarin Airport was closed.
- Leningrad Oblast — July 22 and July 24.
- Murmansk — on July 2 the authorities throttled mobile internet speed without formally declaring a drone-danger regime.
- Rostov-on-Don landed in the risk zone fairly often — July 17, 19–20, 25, 27, 29, and 30.
- Another region where the drone- and missile-danger regime was switched on often is the Republic of Bashkortostan. Connection problems there began as early as July 1 — or rather, continued from June. Network incidents recurred on July 6–8, 14, 23, 25, 27, and 30.
A separate note on Crimea: from July 4 to 6 the peninsula had a shutdown due to a power outage, which is visible on the Amnezia Pulse charts at the start of the month.
Around July 23, the peninsula was again partially left without power, and in Dzhankoi mobile service was put “on a schedule” — working reliably only from 8:00 to 12:00 and from 14:00 to 18:00.
New Methods of Blocking, Network Control, and Censorship
The Ministry of Digital Development’s Hat Trick
The ministry presented a draft third package of measures against phone fraud. The amendments are set to take effect on March 1, 2028:
- Owners of websites and apps will be required to store information about user account registration, authorization, and deletion for three years.
- Virtual PBXs(Private Branch Exchange) will be able to work only with Russian IP addresses, and hosting providers must submit all addresses they own to a registry.
- Operators will be required to collect more data about subscribers to hand over to law enforcement on request.
- The Antifraud state information system will begin collecting data on fraudsters.
Finally, on July 30 the ministry floated the idea of forcing foreign services available in Russia to authorize users in Russia by phone number only.
At the same time, the Ministry of Digital Development did rule out charging for foreign traffic — State Secretary Ivan Lebedev denied rumors of a separate tariff for foreign services.
The ministry also proposed, on July 10, mandatory identification through Gosuslugi for foreign clients of Russian hosting providers. The agency appeals to cleaning up the market, but on July 17 representatives of major players such as Yandex Cloud, VK Cloud, Timeweb, and Selectel warned that foreign clients — 5–15% of the total — would leave for less strict jurisdictions, and some sites would end up in the hands of fraudsters altogether. They propose a compromise — keeping a payment through a Russian bank as an identity verification.
On July 23, representatives of the Ministry of Digital Development proposed that Russians install government SSL certificates themselves. According to the agency, foreign certificates could be revoked unexpectedly, and sites would display incorrectly. Note that the certificates proposed by the ministry allow government agencies to decrypt and substitute traffic.
Website Owners Get Deanonymized
Starting September 1, it will no longer be possible to get a domain in the .ru zone without registering the site through Gosuslugi due to the corresponding law taking effect.
AI as an Aggravating Circumstance
The Russian Investigative Committee has drafted a bill that would make the use of chatbots an aggravating circumstance in crimes — by analogy with the existing rule on VPNs and proxies. Exactly how law enforcement plans to prove the use of AI is not explained.
The Amnezia VPN blog’s editorial team reminds readers that criminal activity is frowned upon regardless of whether a VPN is used
Other News
Pavel Durov Placed on the International Wanted List
On July 29, the FSB charged the creator of Telegram with “aiding terrorism” — he faces up to 15 years in prison. The pretext for the prosecution was insufficiently active efforts against extremist material.
There Will Be Less Foreign Traffic, but It’s Not Critical
Starting in 2027, Finland’s Fingrid will stop maintaining power line towers. Until 2022, they carried an exchange: electricity was exported to Finland, and Russia got access to fiber-optic communication lines.
Experts clarify that the main traffic already runs through underground cables along roads, so this shouldn’t affect internet connection quality. In any case, we’ll keep watching this troubling trend of network infrastructure degradation.
Good News of the Month: Social Media Audiences Are Growing Despite the Blocking
While Roskomnadzor tries to block Amnezia VPN, Russians are finding paths to a free internet. The RoRe Group assessed the audience of social networks and messengers for January–May 2026 and concluded that the audience of social networks such as Instagram and Discord grew by 20%, while for Threads it even doubled.
At the same time, Telegram and WhatsApp lost almost half of their user base. We believe the audience is “flowing over” to platforms that the authorities so far restrict less actively.
July Trends
Increasingly, it’s not the tools for bypassing blocking themselves that come under fire, but the infrastructure the internet rests on — certificates, domains, CDNsContent Delivery Networks. The criminal prosecution in Pavel Durov’s case is just one more lever of pressure on the free internet in Russia.
We continue to track the development of internet censorship and the state of the network in Russia and around the globe. To do this, we rely on anonymized data about user connections. Connect to Amnezia Premium or Amnezia Free to make the next digest as accurate as possible.
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