Russia’s internet crackdown is cutting developers off from GitHub and Python. The government’s proposed fix? A VPN controlled by the government.
Russia’s federal media regulator, Roskomnadzor, plans to create a unified “state VPN” for Russian software developers who have lost access to foreign repositories because of internet restrictions, The Bell reported, citing sources from two companies that were invited to meet with the agency.
The meeting took place on June 8, prompted by complaints from developers that Russia’s blocking of VPN services was periodically cutting them off from foreign tools — among them the code-sharing platform GitHub, the Linux and Python repositories, and the design tool Figma.
Roskomnadzor’s deputy head, Oleg Terlyakov, represented the regulator at the meeting. Terlyakov declined to discuss the reasons for the blockages, a source who attended the meeting told The Bell. Instead, he proposed “creating a unified state VPN with a complex structure” for developers to route their traffic through — intended, the source said, for “those who really need it, in their view.”
A second source in the IT industry confirmed the account. “There are no details yet,” this source said, adding that the state VPN would be discussed more thoroughly at a follow-up meeting.
According to The Bell, developers at the meeting were also urged to “maintain ongoing communication” and “log incidents that Roskomnadzor will resolve manually.” The agency also promoted the creation of a domestic open-source software repository.
The proposal drew little enthusiasm from developers, according to The Bell’s sources. “This will only help with ‘sanctions-based blocks’,” one source said.
“It will be even easier to cut Russians off from international development tools if everyone is routing through the same VPN,” another source said.
“Access through it could easily be blocked by foreign governments, and the concept itself raises serious concerns,” a source at one of Russia’s IT associations told The Bell. “While the entire country contends with degraded internet service, a privileged tier of users with unrestricted access would be created. And who would determine who qualifies?”
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