The new law, proposed recently, provides pretty harsh regulation for VPN and anonymizer services operating in Russia. Not all are happy with intention of Russian government to control anonymizers and messengers in Russia. Internet ombudsman believes it is madness to block VPN services in a case if they don’t comply with requirements of Russian supervising authorities.
Some people use such services in order to get access to something what is blocked in Russia under current law. But some people use these services without intention to circumvent the law or to violate it. Anyway, it seems the regulation of VPN services and messengers will be adopted in any case. The question is how harsh and reasonable it will be.
Roskomnadzor, Russian Central Bank and Ministry of internal affairs have upheld the draft law. But the business community believes implementation of this law will be very costly – billions of dollars. The law has been introduced to Russian state duma, considered and discussed between stakeholders. As a result the decision was made to form a working group in order to improve the draft law.
The more restrictive laws are adopted in Russia, the more funding from state budget need supervising authorities like Roskomnadzor. The chief of Russian Federal Security Service has asked Russian state duma to speed up adoption of the law providing regulation for messengers and anonymizers.