Russian Throttling of Cloudflare ‘Renders Many Websites Barely Usable’
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<p>Russian President Vladimir Putin in May threatened to <a href="https://www.barrons.com/news/putin-threatens-to-throttle-western-firms-remaining-in-russia-8bb06070" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“throttle” companies</a> from the United States and elsewhere doing business in the country that he said were working against the interests of the state, adding that “we must respond in kind, mirror their actions.”</p><p>Over the past several weeks, Russia has done just that, with internet service providers (ISPs) in the country blocking access to websites protected by Cloudflare, a U.S.-based company whose services are used to make websites more secure and reliable.</p><p>Cloudflare officials said the action started June 9, with Russian internet users accessing the service able to load only the first 16 KB of data from a website, adding that it is “rendering most web navigation impossible.”</p><div class="code-block code-block-12 ai-track" data-ai="WzEyLCIiLCJCbG9jayAxMiIsIiIsMV0=" style="margin: 8px 0; clear: both;"> <style> .ai-rotate {position: relative;} .ai-rotate-hidden {visibility: hidden;} .ai-rotate-hidden-2 {position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;} .ai-list-data, .ai-ip-data, .ai-filter-check, .ai-fallback, .ai-list-block, .ai-list-block-ip, .ai-list-block-filter {visibility: hidden; position: absolute; width: 50%; height: 1px; top: -1000px; z-index: -9999; margin: 0px!important;} .ai-list-data, .ai-ip-data, .ai-filter-check, .ai-fallback {min-width: 1px;} </style> <div class="ai-rotate ai-unprocessed ai-timed-rotation ai-12-1" data-info="WyIxMi0xIiwyXQ==" style="position: relative;"> <div class="ai-rotate-option" style="visibility: hidden;" data-index="1" data-name="VGVjaHN0cm9uZyBHYW5nIFlvdXR1YmU=" data-time="MTA="> <div class="custom-ad"> <div style="margin: auto; text-align: center;"><a href="https://youtu.be/Fojn5NFwaw8" target="_blank"><img src="https://securityboulevard.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Techstrong-Gang-Youtube-PodcastV2-770.png" alt="Techstrong Gang Youtube"></a></div> <div class="clear-custom-ad"></div> </div></div> <div class="ai-rotate-option" style="visibility: hidden; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;" data-index="1" data-name="QVdTIEh1Yg==" data-time="MTA="> <div class="custom-ad"> <div style="margin: auto; text-align: center;"><a href="https://devops.com/builder-community-hub/?ref=in-article-ad-1&utm_source=do&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=in-article-ad-1" target="_blank"><img src="https://devops.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Gradient-1.png" alt="AWS Hub"></a></div> <div class="clear-custom-ad"></div> </div></div> </div> </div><p>“As the throttling is being applied by local ISPs, the action is outside of Cloudflare’s control and we are unable, at this time, to restore reliable, high performance access to Cloudflare products and protected websites for Russian users in a lawful manner,” Michael Tremante, senior director of product at Cloudflare, and Alissa Starzak, vice president, deputy chief legal officer and global head of public policy, <a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/russian-internet-users-are-unable-to-access-the-open-internet/#the-view-from-cloudflare-data" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote in a blog post</a>.</p><h3>Stepping on Western Companies</h3><p>Many U.S. companies left Russia after its 2022 invasion of neighboring Ukraine, and Putin’s government has taken a hard stance against some of those who kept operations in the country. It appears the nation’s actions against Cloudflare are designed to force Russian citizens to use Russian ISPs instead of those from Western countries.</p><div class="code-block code-block-15" style="margin: 8px 0; clear: both;"> <script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-2091799172090865" crossorigin="anonymous" type="13007bc97a23d21c340f0166-text/javascript"></script> <!-- SB In Article Ad 1 --> <ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2091799172090865" data-ad-slot="8723094367" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins> <script type="13007bc97a23d21c340f0166-text/javascript"> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); </script></div><p>In March, Russia’s Center for Monitoring and Control of the Public Communications Network, a group within the country’s internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, announced it planned to study how dependent Russian services and telecom operators are on the infrastructure of companies outside of Russia. The study is needed to “develop measures to <a href="https://www.interfax.ru/russia/1015589" target="_blank" rel="noopener">increase the stability and security</a> of the aforementioned services as part of the task of ensuring network sovereignty,” Roskomnadzor said at the time.</p><p>Two months later, Putin was making his threats against Western tech companies and their operations in the country, including Microsoft and Zoom.</p><h3>No Communications from Russia</h3><p>Cloudflare’s Tremante and Starzak wrote that the company got no notice from the Russian government about why the actions this month were taken, but added that they’re “consistent with longstanding Russian efforts to isolate the internet within its borders and reduce reliance on Western technology by replacing it with domestic alternatives.”</p><p>Two months after Russian troops began moving into Ukraine in 2022, Cloudflare wrote about its efforts to protect Ukraine’s internet operations from Russia’s aggressive online actions and to <a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/what-cloudflare-is-doing-to-keep-the-open-internet-flowing-into-russia-and-keep-attacks-from-getting-out/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">counter the government’s internal efforts</a> to strengthen its grip on what its citizens could see on the internet. The government already had begun to tighten access to the internet over the previous five years – ordering Russian ISPs to install equipment to allow the government to monitor and block internet activity, for example – and accelerate such efforts in the months after the illegal Ukraine invasion, including ordering government agencies to switch to Russian DNS servers and shift public resources to hosting services in Russia.</p><p><a href="https://en.zona.media/article/2025/06/19/cloudflare" target="_blank" rel="noopener">According to reports</a>, other hosting providers from the West are being similarly throttled, including U.S.-based DigitalOcean and Hetzner in Germany. In May, Russian citizens started having difficulties accessing OVH, a large cloud computing company based in France.</p><h3>Russian ISPs at the Source</h3><p>Cloudflare noted that the service disruptions are being initiated inside Russia, even when the connection gets to Cloudflare’s servers outside of the country, an indication that the interference is occurring inside Russian ISPs, including Rostelecom, Megafon, Vimpelcom, MTS and MGTS.</p><p>“Based on our observations, Russian ISPs are using several throttling and blocking mechanisms affecting sites protected by Cloudflare, including injected packets to halt the connection and blocking packets so the connection times out,” Tremante and Starzak wrote. “A new tactic that began on June 9 limits the amount of content served to 16 KB, which renders many websites barely usable.”</p><p>All connection methods and protocols – such as HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2 on TCP, TLS and HTTP/3 on QUIC – are impacted, they added.</p><p>There’s not much Cloudflare can do at this point.</p><p>“If you are using Cloudflare to protect your sites, unfortunately, at this time, Cloudflare does not have the ability to restore internet connectivity for Russia-based users,” they wrote. “We advise you to reach out and solicit Russian entities to lift the throttling measures that have been put in place. If you are a Cloudflare enterprise customer, please reach out to your account team for further assistance.”</p><div class="spu-placeholder" style="display:none"></div>