You are abroad and try to open Sberbank — the app hangs. You open Kinopoisk — a grey screen with a padlock. You try Gosuslugi — 403 Forbidden.
First thought: "I'll grab any VPN from the App Store." It doesn't work. Or works today and not tomorrow.
The VPN isn't "bad". Most of them are simply not built for Russian services.
Why an ordinary VPN falls short
Russian platforms have hardened their defences considerably in recent years. They use DPI — deep packet inspection, which can tell VPN traffic from an ordinary browser. Classic protocols — OpenVPN, WireGuard in standard configuration — are recognised in seconds.
On top of that, most large Western VPN providers pulled their servers out of Russia back in 2022. You simply can't get a Russian IP from them.
What actually works in 2025
Two protocols that are not mass-blocked:
VLESS — disguises traffic as ordinary HTTPS. For government sites and banks this is the crucial part: they don't see a VPN, they see a browser's ordinary encrypted traffic.
Trojan — works along the same lines and has proven itself for streaming. If one service dislikes something about VLESS, you switch to Trojan.
The services VPN Russia is tuned for
We tuned our servers specifically for:
- Kinopoisk — HD and 4K without buffering
- Yandex Music — offline-track sync, podcasts
- Sberbank, T-Bank, VTB — the anti-fraud systems stay quiet
- Gosuslugi, FNS, Rosreestr — ESIA sign-in completes without errors
Choosing a protocol
A simple rule: start with VLESS. If a particular site won't open, switch to Trojan. The VPN Russia app shows both options in one interface — nothing to configure by hand.
If something still doesn't work, write to support. Real people, not a bot, will sort it out for your ISP and country.