The Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation is working on an initiative that could fundamentally change how Russian users access the foreign internet. According to Forbes sources familiar with the ministry's discussions, the upcoming telecommunications reform bill is planned to include a provision to route all traffic related to foreign domains through Technical Means of Countering Threats (TMCT). In addition, the Ministry intends to grant itself the right to set a limit on the volume of foreign traffic, exceeding which will result in restricted access. The specific quota amount has not yet been determined.
How Infrastructure Works and Why a 'Simple' Restriction Proves Complex
TMCT were deployed on Russian telecom operators' networks as part of the 'sovereign Runet' law, which came into effect in November 2019. These hardware-software systems are designed to filter traffic, block resources, and restrict access to specific services. However, their architecture does not initially provide for tracking traffic at the level of an individual subscriber: the devices are located at the junctions of operators' networks with backbone infrastructure and analyze the general data flow without complete information about which specific websites each user is requesting. ComNews Research partner Leonid Konik emphasizes that a request from Russia to a Russian server can easily pass through the infrastructure of other countries, and traffic is directed not only to websites, but also to cloud platforms, content delivery networks (CDNs), and gaming services. Determining the origin of a stream solely by the data transmission route is technically impossible.
The Problem of Identification: IP Addresses, DNS, and Encryption
An additional obstacle is that devices in the network exchange data using IP addresses rather than domain names. A website's name can be identified via DNS queries or during the initial stage of establishing a TLS connection, but when using encrypted DNS (DNS-over-HTTPS, DNS-over-TLS), such identification becomes unavailable. Accounting by IP address lists also generates systematic errors: a Russian service hosted abroad will be classified as a foreign resource, and a foreign site operating on a Russian server will be considered domestic. According to an RKS Global technical expert, at external network junctions, TMCT see data only after Network Address Translation (NAT), when thousands of subscribers simultaneously share a single public IP address. Introducing personal quotas would require an additional mechanism to correlate traffic with specific users in real-time, which is absent in the current infrastructure.
What Will Actually 'Get Hit': Not Just VPNs
Foreign traffic is used for far more than bypassing blocks. Foreign infrastructure handles updates for Android and iOS operating systems, downloads from app stores, the operation of messengers such as Telegram, and online games. According to RKS Global estimates, such services can account for about a third of all internet traffic. This means restrictions could affect many everyday tasks—from installing updates to downloading content from app stores—rather than just the use of VPN services. Stanislav Seleznev, a lawyer and digital security expert with the 'Net Freedoms' project, confirms that separating traffic by the geographical affiliation of IP addresses is technically possible, but this method does not provide one hundred percent accuracy, which will inevitably lead to false positives.
Reform Context and Previous Initiatives
The initiative to restrict foreign traffic is part of a broader reform of the telecommunications industry that the Ministry of Digital Development has been preparing since the spring of 2026. Other proposals discussed within the bill include reducing the number of telecom operator license types from 17 to three and increasing the minimum authorized capital requirements for companies, which analysts believe could lead to a significant portion of regional providers leaving the market. Previously, the ministry also considered introducing an additional fee for using more than 15 gigabytes of international traffic per month on mobile networks, though this initiative was postponed. The Ministry of Digital Development confirmed that it is continuing to work on legislative changes together with other agencies and market participants, while emphasizing that it is premature to say which specific proposals will be included in the final version of the amendments.
Potential Consequences for Users
If the initiative is implemented in its proposed form, users risk facing slower loading times for websites, apps, and updates, as well as unpredictable disruptions in services that depend on international infrastructure. Russian resources hosted abroad may be mistakenly classified as foreign and subjected to restrictions. At the same time, the exact scale of the impact on everyday internet traffic at the current stage of development is difficult to assess: the quota amount, accounting mechanisms, and list of exceptions have not yet been included in the bill.
