Russia's internet regulator broke developer access to critical tools by cracking down on VPNs. Its proposed fix is a VPN it controls.
Roskomnadzor, the agency that oversees Russia's internet infrastructure, has proposed building a state-owned VPN to restore access to developer resources that became collateral damage in its own campaign against third-party VPN services. The original crackdown was aimed at stopping Russians from bypassing censorship - and it worked on that front. But it also severed access to code repositories, package registries, and other infrastructure that the country's software developers depend on daily. The state-run VPN would give developers a sanctioned route back to those resources.
The problem is structural: a VPN you don't control is not a privacy tool, it's a monitored pipe. Russia's IT community has raised exactly this concern - routing developer traffic through government infrastructure hands authorities a complete log of who is accessing what, when, and from where. That's not a fix for the collateral damage. It's a formalization of surveillance dressed up as a technical remedy.
The playbook is familiar. Block the foreign option, create pressure, then offer a controlled alternative that happens to be auditable by the state. China's domestic tech ecosystem grew partly from the same logic. The difference is China built its substitutes first. Russia is improvising.