The US government will provide additional funding to three VPN services that provide Russian users with access to blocked sites. Washington wants to help Russians circumvent Internet censorship, Reuters reports .

The nthLink, Psiphon and Lantern services will receive additional funding. After the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Russia massively blocked social networking sites and independent media. This was the reason for the rise in popularity of VPN services that allow you to bypass blocking: in April, Yota calculated that since the beginning of 2022, the number of VPN users in Russia has increased by 53.5 times. On May 29, the GlobalCheck project and Philip Kulin , an IT specialist and author of the Escher II telegram channel, wrote that blocking popular VPN protocols was being tested in entire regions of Russia.

Blocking VPN services in Russia began in the spring of 2018, when the country tried to block the Telegram messenger.

Over the past 6 years, VPN services have received $4.8 million from the US government to help circumvent censorship in various countries, but their funding has almost doubled since February, Reuters notes, without naming the exact amount.

On June 2, Roskomnadzor confirmed reports that Russia is taking measures to limit the operation of VPN services, as means of bypassing blocking are recognized as a threat.

“According to the Law on Communications, means of bypassing blocking of illegal content are recognized as a threat. The Center for Monitoring and Control of the Public Communications Network is taking measures to limit the operation of VPN services in Russia that violate Russian law.”

On the morning of June 2, the Proton VPN service in Russia began to malfunction. The company suggested that the Russian authorities, together with providers, began to block the service in the country.