Russia Blocks Foreign SIM Cards From Bypassing State Censorship

The Russian Ministry of Digital Development confirmed that mobile internet traffic from foreign SIM cards is now subjected to the exact same filtration and blocking as local Russian connections.

For the past couple of years, local digital rebels have been buying foreign SIM cards on local marketplaces to bypass state blocks. According to estimates by the Mobile Research Group, there are about 2 million of these foreign cards active in the country, with half a million people using them on a daily basis to access banned Western services like Netflix.

Previously, when a user roamed with a foreign card from Kazakhstan or the UAE, the connection relied on a protocol called S8 Home Routing. This magic tunnel sent all the traffic straight to the foreign operator's home network, completely bypassing local filters as if the user were physically abroad. But the local cyber-overlords apparently got tired of this digital sanctuary and deployed deep packet inspection to sniff out and strangle these encrypted tunnels based on their traffic signatures.

Now, even a pricey Nigerian SIM card—which costs about a thousand rubles to buy and a ridiculous thousand rubles per gigabyte to run—will render the exact same government block screen as a cheap local carrier.

The dream of paying triple-price roaming fees to Nigeria just to browse social media without a VPN has officially crashed into the cold reality of state-controlled infrastructure. In this sandbox, the house always wins, and the walls only grow thicker, leaving the remaining bypass enthusiasts to either embrace the slow VPN death or start writing actual letters on paper.