In Russia goverment is trying to control everything: from oil production and pasta price to information. During the first Putin’s term he destroyed independent TV. It was explained as a fight against oligrachs, that controled media. As a result state controls all TV channels now and there is no place for Kremlin critics there.
During his second term all newspapers were taken under control. RBK, Vedomosty and many others fired their editors and replaced them with loyal ones.
Now, during Putin’s third term, government is trying to conquer the Internet. Many sites with independent news were banned. They successfully banned small LinkedIn and tried to bann Telegram but with no success. Since then, many bills appeared and Internet watchdog Roskomnadzor has it’s own hardware on all internet providers’ channels. So they decided to take a new attempt in this fight and block Twitter in Russia.
Nobody knows what exactly goverment could do, but it looks like they couldn’t block information through VPN. However VPN service costs more and more each year. I have been using rather cheap Avast VPN for two years. Last year they closed service in Russia, but I was able to buy licence switching to Ukrainian site.
This year they doubled price!!!
But even worse, this VPN is useless now to overcome censorship. Notification during the purchase explains that banned sites would be unavailable.
Most popular sevices costs about 3500 roubles a year. However, I was able to find decent provider for 1$ a month. It’s VPN99.
So far it works nice. But I don’t think many people would pay even one dollar to get access to banned sites. As a result, fewer and fewer people in Russian would have access to alternative ideas, news and opinions.