Soaring VPN downloads are a symptom of all that is wrong in Russia
There has been a huge rise in the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) in Russia since the start of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, with something like half a million downloads a day, compared to around 10,000 before Vladimir Putin started his war.
People are turning to VPNs so they can bypass the information iron curtain that the Kremlin has drawn across the country: Russians can no longer access Netflix or read anything that isn’t approved by the regime, or use Twitter, as well as Facebook or Instagram, which have been banned for “extremist activities”. Suddenly, people are digitally isolated from the rest of the world, with only a diet of official, increasingly implausible news about what is going on in Ukraine.
For the many Russians living abroad, this is a very difficult situation, because when they talk to people still inside the country they are given a very different version of reality. Similarly, Russians who use a VPN find themselves at odds with their friends and family who are only exposed to the official versions of the conflict.
The war has given Putin an unparalleled opportunity to fulfill his dream of a closed internet he can control, although he still faces a major problem: the country still lacks the infrastructure developed over the years by countries such as…
