From September 1, fines for advertising VPNs and other means of bypassing blocking, as well as for deliberately searching for extremist materials from the federal list, come into force in Russia.
Advertising such services will cost citizens 50–80 thousand rubles, officials — 80–150 thousand, legal entities — 200–500 thousand rubles.
Owners of VPN services who have not complied with the instructions of Roskomnadzor risk receiving fines from 100 to 200 thousand rubles for citizens, from 200 to 300 thousand for officials, and from 800 thousand to 1 million rubles for organizations.
A violation is considered to be a refusal to connect to the state control system or non-compliance with the requirements to restrict access to prohibited resources.
Separate liability is provided for deliberately searching for extremist materials, including using VPN. The fine for this will be 3–5 thousand rubles.
The authors of the amendments note that they are primarily aimed at providers, platforms and intermediaries. According to him, users will not be fined for accessing blocked resources, as well as for accidentally opening pages with extremist materials, if the content is not distributed and not saved. The head of the Ministry of Digital Development, Maksut Shadaev, also stated that the new law does not pose any risks for ordinary citizens.
The Federal List of Extremist Materials is maintained by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation on the basis of court decisions. It now contains about 5.5 thousand positions. Roskomnadzor is responsible for monitoring their distribution and restricting access.
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