Russia’s presidential human rights council head says banning VPNs is impossible, warns shutdown could break the internet

Valery Fadeev, head of the Human Rights Council under Russia’s president, said banning or “switching off” VPN services is impossible. He told the Russian business news outlet RBC that any additional legislative regulation of such services would be futile.

“I don’t really understand how to regulate VPNs, because it became clear to everyone fairly quickly that this is an extremely complex system and that banning or switching off VPNs is simply impossible. If you try to shut everything down, the entire vast internet system could simply be broken. That’s obvious,” Fadeev said.

He added that this is now “clear to everyone, though specialists understood it long ago.” Businesses, banks, and “programmers who download code” would all suffer from any VPN “shutdown,” Fadeev said.

Fadeev said he has “never said that VPNs should be shut down.” At the same time, he acknowledged, “certain Russian citizens” use VPNs to access information sources and television channels blocked in the country.

“It’s worth remembering that some of these media outlets work for the enemy — they are not an alternative source. Some of them have been designated as foreign agents, others as undesirable organizations. What you find there is not alternative information but enemy propaganda. This is not a legal question, not a matter of some kind of restriction — it’s a question of civic consciousness,” he said.

Fadeev also urged people not to equate internet shutdowns with restrictions on freedom of speech, as “part of the Russian intelligentsia” does, he said, without specifying whom he meant. Restrictions on internet access are necessary for security, he argued, because Ukrainian forces “are striking many Russian cities.”

He dismissed the experience of countries like Israel — which do not restrict internet access on security grounds — as irrelevant. “Israel has effectively failed to defend against Iranian missiles,” Fadeev said.

This is not the first time Fadeev has spoken out about restricting VPN services. He himself, by his own account, does not use circumvention tools. Two weeks ago he said that using a VPN was “something unnatural” and that Russians who use VPNs are not looking for an alternative viewpoint online but rather “what the enemy is saying.” “Meduza, TV Rain — that’s not another point of view, that’s the enemy’s point of view,” Fadeev said.