Unblock The Guardian from Russia

In Russia, a nationwide The Guardian ban is rare. What is more common is a block on the network you are actually using — a college campus, an office, a hostel, or an ISP that throttles video during peak hours.

Occasionally the picture is broader. During exams some states restrict streaming on education networks. Specific pages are sometimes taken down under local court orders. But the underlying site stays online — the restriction is a filter sitting between your device and The Guardian's servers.

Because that filter only inspects traffic on its own network, fetching the page through one of our servers outside it returns The Guardian exactly as it loads everywhere else. No app to install, no settings to change on your device.

On networks from Rostelecom, MTS, Beeline and Megafon, the block usually sits between your device and The Guardian at the ISP or workplace level — not at The Guardian's end.

Roskomnadzor maintains an extensive block list that now includes Instagram, Facebook, and X. VPN and proxy providers themselves have been progressively blocked. Filtering has intensified since 2022, with DPI-based blocks and active protocol fingerprinting.

On The Guardian specifically: Roskomnadzor uses DPI plus ISP-level DNS and IP blocking. Many popular VPN protocols are actively fingerprinted and dropped. The mechanics matter because The Guardian — as a news outlet — hits multiple layers of the filter at once: the domain shows on DNS blocklists, the destination IPs are known, and the TLS handshake is fingerprintable.

Language note: Users searching in Русский looking for The Guardian access typically land on network-level workarounds first — DNS-over-HTTPS or a public DNS resolver. Those help against DNS-only blocks; they do not help against IP or DPI-level filtering. A web proxy handles all three layers because it moves the destination lookup off your network entirely.

Nothing on this page constitutes legal advice. If your workplace policy prohibits proxies specifically, that policy still applies; the fact that the tool is legal does not override an agreement you signed with an employer or a school.