Apple's 2025 App Store Transparency Report disclosed that 2,045 apps were removed globally due to government takedown requests, with Russia accounting for 1,213 removals and China mainland for 196. Russia's count increased dramatically from 171 in 2024, 12 in 2023, and 7 in 2022 — a roughly 7× year-over-year increase — while Access Now reported that 2025 saw at least 313 internet shutdowns across 52 countries, the highest number recorded since tracking began in 2016.

Based on analysis of over 100,000 leaked Geedge Networks documents, InterSecLab (2025) found that Geedge supplied China-GFW-equivalent censorship and surveillance systems to Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Myanmar. The systems include deep packet inspection, real-time mobile user monitoring, fine-grained traffic control, regionally customizable censorship rules, and — per WIRED's reporting — ML-based extraction of metadata from encrypted traffic to determine whether a flow is likely from a VPN or circumvention tool.

§8 (InterSecLab / WIRED section) detection

LetsVPN (快连) announced termination of China mainland operations on April 28, 2026, stating the team had attempted adjustments 'almost every hour' for 20 days before concluding the connectivity problem was unsolvable. A follow-up announcement on May 8 declared 'resumption of global standard operations' but explicitly stated it could not guarantee China mainland availability.

§3 (快连 / LetsVPN section) deployment

Russia's Roskomnadzor confirmed in February 2026 that it had blocked 469 VPN services used to bypass censorship. Starting December 2025, Russia began blocking the three most commonly used VPN protocols, and from 2025 onward began imposing penalties for promoting VPN services.

§5 (Human Rights Watch section) deployment

In April 2026, Russia nearly completely blocked Telegram, reducing availability without VPN to 5% during the first ten days; Russia's VPN user base was estimated at no less than 40% of the population. Beginning in mid-April, over 20 major Russian websites and platforms (including Gosuslugi, Ozon, Yandex, Sberbank, VK) began restricting access for VPN users, and Russia introduced a whitelist-based service model permitting only state-approved services under certain network restriction states.

§4 (俄罗斯 Telegram / OSW section) deployment