Russia's Ministry of Digital Development is preparing a sweeping package of measures designed to transform the country's internet from a partially open network into a fully state-controlled infrastructure, according to an assessment by Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service.

The Kremlin has been working to take control of Russia’s Internet, known as RuNet, under its slogan of “digital sovereign” a plan that would make sustained VPN use prohibitively expensive, eliminate most independent internet providers and give the FSB direct access to the traffic of all remaining subscribers.

The government has been throttling western internet companies like YouTube and messaging services and pushing normal people to use domestic analogies. However, the population has widely avoided these crackdowns by using VPNs to dodge the blocks. However, recently the Kremlin’s efforts have increased with a crackdown on VPNs that is extremely unpopular with locals.

Now the state has come up with a new plan. Like the Chris Rock joke to ban guns in America, rather than banning VPNs, the government intends to make them very expensive. “Don’t ban guns. Just make every bullet cost $5,000. No one would ever get shot again,” said Rock.

The centrepiece measure is the introduction of a charge of approximately $2 per gigabyte for international internet traffic consumed by mobile users. Officially presented as a tariff model change, the true goal is to make continuous VPN use financially unaffordable for ordinary Russians.

The average active user consumes 25 to 30 gigabytes per month — and if a VPN is constantly active, all traffic could be classified as international even when the user is accessing domestic content, creating monthly bills of $50 to $60 purely for internet access.

Telecom operators have already told the ministry they are technically unprepared to implement the measure and have requested a postponement until at least September 1, with some sources suggesting it could slip to early 2028.

Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadayev stated in late March that reducing VPN usage had been set as a "priority" for his ministry. Apple blocked mobile billing as an App Store payment method in April — eliminating one of the last ways Russians could subscribe to foreign VPN services — while operators were ordered from April 1 to stop allowing Apple ID top-ups via mobile accounts and to introduce a 15 GB monthly threshold above which international traffic charges apply.

The provider consolidation

Alongside the VPN pricing mechanism, the ministry is pursuing a radical restructuring of the telecommunications licensing framework. The current 17 types of communications licences are to be reduced to three, with sharply increased financial thresholds for market entry — new licences are expected to cost between RUB1mn and RUB50mn ($13,300 to $668,000), with minimum capital requirements that most small operators cannot meet.

Of more than 4,200 active broadband operators in Russia, only a small fraction will be able to comply. More than 90% of small providers — regional internet companies, cable television operators and local networks — face the threat of liquidation or forced absorption by larger players.

The AMOR association of regional operators has warned that the reforms are being pursued in the interests of the five largest providers — Rostelecom, VimpelCom (NYSE: VIP), ER-Telecom, MTS (NYSE: MBT) and MegaFon — and would create an oligopoly in which the entire industry is controlled by a handful of companies with close state ties. One regional provider owner told the Russian outlet iStories: "None of the companies had ever doubted that the consolidation would happen. It's just a matter of time and approach — whether they'll buy us or just take the business."

FSB surveillance

The third strand of the package concerns surveillance. A ban is under active discussion on the provision of communications services by any company — including individual entrepreneurs — that has not installed SORM, the System for Operative Investigative Activities that gives the Federal Security Service (FSB) direct access to subscriber traffic and stored metadata.

Previously, companies were given up to two years to implement SORM; the new rules would significantly shorten that period. The Ministry of Digital Development is simultaneously seeking to restore scheduled inspections of operators, despite a moratorium currently in effect until 2030.

In February 2026, the FSB began demanding that banks install SORM surveillance equipment and excluded non-compliant institutions from the government whitelist. Russian courts have issued fines for 28 violations of filtration system requirements between October 2025 and March 2026, with fines of RUB4mn ($53,500) for non-compliant providers.

The infrastructure of control is expanding in parallel. Russia's Ministry of Digital Development plans to increase the capacity of its TSPU traffic filtering system — Deep Packet Inspection hardware installed directly at all telecommunications operators — by 2.5 times to 954 terabits per second by 2030, at a cost of approximately RUB83.7bn.

Starting in 2026, the system is designed to process 100% of all Russian internet traffic. The online regulator Roskomnadzor reported a 59% increase in internet content blocking in 2025 and plans to implement AI-based traffic filtering in 2026.

The combined effect of the pricing, licensing and surveillance measures would, according to the Ukrainian intelligence assessment, amount to a "systemic reorganisation of the digital space" — the effective completion of the RuNet project that Russia has been building since the 2019 Sovereign Internet Law, which first gave the government the technical means to operate the Russian internet independently of the global web.

Russia has already conducted live disconnection tests and Moscow intends to restrict access to data and SMS during the upcoming May 9 Victory Day parade to celebrate the end of WWII.

The question, analysts say, is no longer whether Russia can build a sovereign intranet — it is whether the political cost of doing so, demonstrated in the approval rating damage from the internet outages of recent months, will constrain the pace at which it tries.