VPN and foreign IP restrictions on Russian election websites
Sophia
2026-09-10
Read time
2 minutes
Ahead of the September 2026 State Duma elections, which allow remote electronic voting in 33 Russian regions, users have faced severe access restrictions on government web resources. The Central Election Commission and other authorities are blocking access to their websites for anyone trying to connect from abroad or through specific networks, including virtual private networks.
Restrictions for foreign users and networks
Testing resource availability from various connection points revealed that official election commission domains are completely blocked for foreign IP addresses. Furthermore, access is also denied for some Russian hosting providers. Consequently, even using a Russian proxy or virtual network does not guarantee successful entry to the Central Election Commission website.
Technical specifics of the websites
An interesting detail is that election commission resources function exclusively via the unencrypted HTTP protocol. Attempts to force encryption prevent the pages from loading entirely. This means that special government security certificates are not required, but all transmitted traffic remains open to analysis by providers.
Authorization issues on the voting portal
While the electronic voting portal itself remains accessible worldwide, voting requires authorization through the State Services portal (Gosuslugi). Access to the latter is highly unstable from abroad because security algorithms often misidentify foreign traffic as unwanted networks. If you cannot log into Gosuslugi, voting becomes impossible.
Recommendations for bypassing restrictions
Service developers are advised to use dynamic switching between various Russian IP addresses, handle timeouts correctly, and exclude election websites from forced encryption rules. Regular users should avoid installing questionable root certificates, and system availability is best verified directly via the authorization page.
Using the reliable HiroVPN service can help bypass such network restrictions and ensure stable access to the required resources without unnecessary difficulties.
