Cloudflare confirms Russia restricting access to services – blocking thousands of websites
The U.S. internet infrastructure company Cloudflare has confirmed that Russian internet service providers are blocking access to websites using its protection services, causing major disruptions to web traffic across Russia.
Since June 9th 2025, Internet users located in Russia and connecting to web services protected by Cloudflare have been throttled by Russian Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
As the throttling is being applied by local ISPs, the action is outside of Cloudflare’s control and we are unable, at this time, to restore reliable, high performance access to Cloudflare products and protected websites for Russian users in a lawful manner.
Internal data analysis suggests that the throttling allows Internet users to load only the first 16 KB of any web asset, rendering most web navigation impossible.
Cloudflare has not received any formal outreach or communication from Russian government entities about the motivation for such an action. Unfortunately, the actions are consistent with longstanding Russian efforts to isolate the Internet within its borders and reduce reliance on Western technology by replacing it with domestic alternatives. Indeed, Russian President Vladimir Putin recently publicly threatened to throttle US tech companies operating inside Russia.
Russian Internet Services Providers (ISPs) confirmed to be implementing these disruptive actions include, but are not limited to, Rostelecom, Megafon, Vimpelcom, MTS, and MGTS.
Further details – https://blog.cloudflare.com/russian-internet-users-are-unable-to-access-the-open-internet/
I am one of the editors here at www.systemtek.co.uk I am a UK based technology professional, with an interest in computer security and telecoms.