I live in Russia and the VPN situation seems to be getting bleak. For some reason on my laptop I can’t access CNN anymore or even Pexels without a VPN. And I haven’t tried a lot, but of the ones I’ve tried, no VPN is working for me. Strangely on my phone I can still access CNN and People magazine, stuff like that, without a VPN. Probably not “strangely” but I just don’t understand what’s going on / why this is happening. I would ask on the Facebook expats group but I can’t access it now. Are there VPNs that are still working?
Best VPN is your own as it will never get blocked. Buy your own remote server and set it up via wireguard. Eurohoster is about $5 a month.
Antizapret works as usual, but relatively slow. You can use its configuration for Openwpn
Windscribe isn’t as reliable recently
Psiphon works well, speed is decent, but sometimes doesn’t connect on my phone, computer connects always though
ProtonVPN works great (I use its configuration for Openvpn, have connection problems with the original app), the speed is fantastic, basically the same as the direct connection, but doesn’t have split tunnelling
The reason why it works on your phone and doesn’t on laptop cuz, I guess, you are using different internet connections for them with different providers. The task of blocking resources is done by internet providers so different connection can differ.
situation seems to be getting bleak
Mullvad is very reliable and private. When you register an account, all they give you is a number – that’s your account, not an email/password combo, which is nice if you care about privacy and digital hygiene so to speak
The best vpn is the one you made yourself.
I use Oko VPN on the phone, it seems to be ± fast. Lots of VPNs I previously used got blocked, they just stopped working 
This is true.
I can confirm that one of the options that’s free and still working (albeit slower) is Psiphon.
A better option is to use Outline or a similar service that uses your own virtual server. Outline is easily configured, you just have to pay $6 or so to DigitalOcean for the VPS. It might be a problem if you have Russian bank cards only, but since you’re an expat I assume you have a working card from your country of origin, so there’s no problem here.
Also u can use a GoodbyeDPI an instrument that will bypass Deep Packet Inspection from your ISP
I am constantly changing free vpn apps I’m using. They got blocked one after another. Some things even VPN cannot help with. For example, I’m lost my favorite game, Pokemon Go, which helped me with long walks, and I contributed a lot to the community (created dozens of pokestops). Now it is all gone. But it is a minute unconveniency. At least my house isn’t bombed.
Blocked sites and especially blocked VPNs depend on the provider, so it’s not surprising that your phone and your PC behave differently if you’re using 4G on one and home network on the other. Keep trying different ones. I have one of my previously blocked Firefox VPN add-ons working now.
Troywell still works on windows. Proton often lags. Psiphon still works on android. Lantern — no, but they are working on it. Try personalised vpn by vpn generator. Or New node, that works well. Or paper vpn by that spb media, they still work too. As faras I understand, there is difference between services that help you go over blocks and regular vpn.
Why do you want to access CNN?
I can access CNN without vpn if we’re talking about cnn dot com website.
As for the VPN situation, yes I have heard some of them got banned (most popular I guess) but not all. Even many free VPNs do work. As for myself, I bought a VPS in one of Baltic states exactly a year ago, installed VPN and since then it worked flawlessly with very little speed cutoff (only 10 mbps less than the actual 100m speed I get from my ISP).
Use a Tor, with getting bridges from [email protected] by sending a e-mail without a subject and it need to have one of these :
get bridges (Request default Tor bridges.)
get ipv6 (Request IPv6 bridges.)
get transport obfs4 (Request obfs4 obfuscated bridges.)
get vanilla (Request unobfuscated Tor bridges).
And after connecting Tor, you can use it as a proxy for progamms. ip and port will be at launch log.
Sorry for my bad english
I have a “friend” who is from the US and American. He set up his server for his Russian girls and asked me to use it, too. He needed a lot of data from my computer to do it, and I declined. I’m not knowledgeable enough to let him possibly install a spying malware on my device. He was pretty pushing about it and tried to assure me, but I thought he is kinda creepy.
I can’t access CNN anymore
Good!
Are there VPNs that are still working?
All VPNs are working for me.
You should probably still come to Russia. And from it already to tell fairy tales about problems with access and VPN.
https://github.com/anticensority
Free, free, constantly updated, installed as an extension in any browser. Using the links from github, you can go to the stores for any of the existing browsers and install the extension from there.
Well, this is if something prevents you from just using the Tor.
Using Super VPN on the phone (using it for twitter, don’t make my mistake)