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Between March 12 and April 1 2025, 214 App Takedown Requests were issued.
47 requests were sent on March 12, which prompted the anti-censorship organization,GreatFire, to investigate.
Google is largely standing firm in the face of Russian censorship.
But we’d argue it shouldn’t be complying with any removal requests that further state censorship.
Despite 87% remaining available, the fact 13% of VPNs have been removed is disappointing.
Another six targeted VPNs disappeared from the Play Store globally.
The time and reasons for removal are unclear.
GreatFire found 47 additional unavailable VPN apps that were not specifically targeted by recent requests.
Of those, 20 have been unavailable since the start of 2024 or earlier.
URL takedown requests were also uncovered by GreatFire.
Another notice on March 26 targeted more than 43,099 URLs.
Additional requests targeted content relating to the Ukraine war, LGBTQ+ topics, poetry, and songs.
GreatFire data shows NordVPN was removed in December 2023, having shut down its Russian servers in 2019.
It shows Surfshark was removed in March 2024 and ExpressVPN was removed between June and August 2024.
ExpressVPN said: “ExpressVPN voluntarily removed our applications from Russian app stores in 2024 for operational reasons.”
Private Internet Access(PIA) andCyberGhostare two other big hitters that aren’t available.
GreatFire data shows PIA was removed sometime between May and December 2024.
CyberGhost was removed sometime between June and September 2024.
This is all data recorded by GreatFire and Tom’s Guide is unable to verify it first hand.
It boasts 53 Plus servers, all located in Moscow, and threeSecure Coreservers.
Proton VPN also includes a number ofanti-censorship featuresdesigned to bypass internet restrictions.
If you have these VPNs already downloaded then they should work in Russia.
However, given Russia’s volatile and sophisticated internet restrictions, this isn’t always a guarantee.
Many VPNs can be downloaded directly from GitHub Proton VPN offers this option.
If you’re looking for one of thebest Android VPNs, then F-Droid is a good place to explore.
Some VPNs can be downloaded straight from the providers website and many offer Chrome extensions.
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).
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.
