When you use the Internet, you always leave traces: if you do something illegal (don’t do that!) or, in the light of this webpage’s purpose, something undesired according to the Russian government, then it is not unthinkable the Russian government will reciprogate your actions. Or perhaps you simply will be blocked, because you have an IP address that belongs to the enemy (The West is the Great Enemy, according to the Russians). In that case, it could be a good idea to consider, whether you should hide yourself behind a VPN connection.

Don’t use any VPN

VPN means Virtual Private Network. What happens, is that all the traffic from your computer will be rerouted, over a server in the country or area, you are having a VPN connection to – and with that it looks like your are having an IP address from det country/area, in stead of the IP address you got from your local internet provider. Both free and paid VPN services exist. Since we cannot guarantee a free VPN service protects good enough, and we neither know why they are free (read: it could so happen, that your computer is being used for obscure purposes, without your knowledge), we always would recommend you to pay for a good VPN service with a good reputation.

Because of a law in Russia, most VPN providers chose to close their offices in Russia, because Russia demanded to get insights in who is using Russian IP addresses – and with that the whole basic idea of anonymity has been removed from under the VPN thoughts. Fortunately, it is still possible with most VPN providers to use Belarussian IP addresses. And in some cases, it could be an advantage to use an Ukrainian IP address.

We don’t have a favorite VPN provider, but a good choice could be CyberGhost. Or else we’d like to recommend ExpressVPN and SurfShark.