- Amnezia VPN has restored its Premium service in Russia
- Amnesia Free is expected to return in the coming weeks
- Roskomnadzor blocked over 90% of its local servers between June 1 and 15
Russian privacy provider Amnezia VPN has successfully restored its Premium service to users in the country after suffering an unprecedented government-sponsored infrastructure strike.
Between June 1 and June 15, millions of Amnesia users in Russia lost their connection after the state censor, Roskomnadzor (RKN), launched a multi-pronged offensive that blocked over 90% of the provider’s local servers.
The strike represents a dramatic escalation in Moscow’s digital crackdown, deploying automated network fingerprinting and targeted cyber attacks to actively hunt VPN infrastructure.
While the Premium tier is now back online with a newly updated, more stealthy protocol, Amnezia has confirmed that its free-tier Russian stack will return in the coming weeks.
For internet users trapped behind Russia’s “sovereign internet” firewall, the stakes have never been higher. Identifying the best VPN has become a critical lifeline for the free web as the state pours huge resources into its censorship machine.
A sophisticated $898 million censorship machine
According to Amnezia’s incident analysis, Roskomnadzor has abandoned basic IP blocking in favor of a highly automated, aggressive rule set.
By analyzing network traffic, Russian authorities appear to have learned to identify the unique “network fingerprint” of specific VPN protocols — Amnezia’s proprietary AmneziaWG protocol included.
When RKN’s internet censorship and filtering system (known as TSPU) detects this fingerprint, it automatically blacklists the server’s IP address. During the June attack, Amnezia attempted to replace its servers, only to see the new IP addresses blocked within hours.
This technological leap is heavily state-funded. Forbes Russia and Kommersant estimate that nearly 60 billion rubles (770 million) will be spent on strengthening the filtering system, while The Moscow Times projects a broader RKN budget allocation of 70 billion rubles (898 million) between 2026 and 2028.
To compound the technical attack, RKN paired its deep packet inspection with traditional hacking tactics and launched active DDoS attacks on VPN services. This wave of attacks even targeted the Amnezia website while deploying phishing schemes against the provider’s staff.
Mazay Banzaev, founder of Amnezia VPN, believes that this escalation is proof that Roskomnadzor had prepared a new set of rules for the TSPU for a long time and fully applied them on June 1. He now expects these measures to be extended to other services operating in Russia.
“Such practices have also been used in other countries, for example Iran and China, but in Russia they have been taken to a new level of automation: on average, a server is blocked within a few hours after users start connecting to it,” Banzaev said.
Going back with better security
Despite the severity of the attack, Amnezia confirmed that no infrastructure was breached and user data remained secure, crediting regular security audits by independent cybersecurity firm 7ASecurity.
To circumvent the new TSPU ruleset, Amnezia has dropped a new version of its AmneziaWG protocol. This update removes the specific feature that allowed censors to identify the VPN traffic in the first place. Users must update their AmneziaVPN client to restore their connection, as the provider has intentionally disabled older, vulnerable versions of the app to prevent repeated attacks.
To compensate for the downtime, Amnezia is also compensating affected users. Premium subscribers on a 6-month subscription will receive an additional month of service, while those on 12-month subscriptions will receive an additional two months.
The provider now has its sights set on future expansion, noting that interest in bypassing government censorship continues to rise globally. Amnezia plans to expand its network to 100 locations while developing new open source methods to outwit the censors.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews and opinions in your feeds. Be sure to click the Follow button!
