Russia has lost more than $25 billion during the invasion of Ukraine due to the blocking of Internet sites
According to this indicator, it took first place in the world, overtaking Ethiopia and Iran
Forced government bans on Internet access cost Russia $25.6 billion over the two years of the war. This is comparable to the 10-year budgets of such large regions as Voronezh or Volgograd.
Source. This is stated in the report of top10vpn.com.
The regime's desire to deprive citizens of uncensored information has made Russia the undisputed world leader in losses due to restrictions on Internet access.
In 2022, when Russians were denied access to Facebook and Instagram as a result of the recognition of Meta's parent company as an extremist organization, as well as Twitter (X), losses amounted to $21.59 billion.
Last year, according to a new report by Top10VPN, the losses to the Russian economy were not as great – $4.02 billion.
However, it still retained its dubious leadership in the global standings ($9.01 billion), outpacing Ethiopia by 2.5 times and Iran, which was ranked 3rd, by 4.4 times.
The more than fivefold reduction in Russian annual losses does not mean that the situation has improved. The large-scale restrictions on access to social media imposed by Russia and Iran in 2022 did not end in 2023, so the question arises as to when such blocking can be considered the new normal, Top10VPN experts write.
However, people switching to other platforms and using virtual private networks (VPNs) to bypass blocking helps to reduce losses.
In Russia, 20% of citizens use VPNs, according to a survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago.
According to estimates by international research company data.ai, services for bypassing website blocking have become the leaders in downloads on Google Play and the App Store: with the overall growth of app downloads in Russia by 1%, the VPN services category grew by 3% to 160 million downloads.
By November 2023, Roskomnadzor had blocked more than 15,000 websites and links in Russia.
Background. As a reminder, the European Commission called on tech giants Google and Meta not to promote Russian and Belarusian propaganda.
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