Google fined 22.8 million rubles for VPN distribution in ongoing Russian censorship push

Russian flag with padlock smashing through glass — (Image credit: SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images)

Moscow’s Tagansky District Court has fined Google LLC almost 23 million rubles ($298,000) for distributing VPN services via Google Play, Russian news agency TASS reports.

The specific charge is "the failure by the owner of an information resource on the Internet to remove information when required by Russian law," and relates to six individual instances of VPN products being promoted to users in Google Play.

Latest in a long line of attacks on internet freedom

This is not the first time Roskomnadzor has targeted VPNs. In March 2025, it requested that 47 VPNs were removed from the Play Store. This coincided with it banning 1.5 million Cloudflare IP addresses, resulting in catastrophic internet outages across much of eastern Russia.

In a similar vein, WhatsApp and Telegram were banned in Russia less than two weeks ago, and the multiplayer game Roblox was blocked in December 2025. The Roblox block caused a significant spike in demand for VPNs, and it's likely that the WhatsApp ban caused a similar shift.

VPN — (Image credit: Chokkicx/Getty Images)

Why are VPNs so important in Russia?

VPNs are essential for those living in countries – like Russia – which suppress online freedom and unbiased journalism. By using one of the best VPNs for Russia, anyone can spoof their location to a country that doesn't restrict content online and freely access it.

However, Russia's crackdown on VPNs means that now, not every VPN can reliably do this. The internet is monitored, and if VPN traffic is detected, it is blocked, rendering it useless. This highlights the importance of VPN obfuscation – technology designed to hide the fact a VPN is being used at all. Many VPNs offer such tech, including Proton VPN (the Stealth protocol), NordVPN (NordWhisper), and Mullvad (QUIC obfuscation).

Although the fine imposed on Google is small in the grand scheme, it demonstrates that Russia is willing to back up its attacks on VPNs with litigation. Due to its absence in court, it is likely that Google will not appeal the decision, but further, larger fines for similar offenses will be harder to ignore.

Disclaimer

We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad. We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.

Mo has been rigorously testing, reviewing, and analyzing VPN services at Tom’s Guide for more than five years. He heads up the three-person Tom's Guide VPN team, and is passionate about accessibility: he believes that online privacy should be an option that’s available to everyone. NordVPN and ExpressVPN are the products he uses most on a daily basis, but he experiments weekly with all the top services, evaluating their privacy features, connection speeds across various protocols, and server reliability – among other things – so that he can make confident VPN recommendations that are backed by data. To see his latest advice, head over to Tom’s Guide’s best VPN and best free VPN guides.

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