Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia's Investigative Committee, has proposed classifying the use of artificial intelligence, VPNs and proxy servers as an aggravating circumstance when committing crimes. According to the Interfax news agency, a corresponding bill has already been drafted.
Bastrykin said the technologies could be used “even when committing murder, driving to suicide, sexual acts, depraved acts, terrorism, extremism.” He called adding such a provision to the Criminal Code “a justified and correct decision.”
The proposed amendment would enshrine in the Criminal Code as an aggravating circumstance “the commission of a crime using information and communication technologies, including artificial intelligence technologies.” Bastrykin clarified that the measure does not involve a mechanical toughening of punishment for any use of gadgets. According to him, the qualifying feature should apply to those acts in which technology became the main means of achieving a criminal result or repeatedly increased the scale of harm — for example, in cyber fraud or illegal data trafficking.
An amendment that already included the use of VPNs and proxy services in the list of aggravating circumstances came into force on September 1, 2025. Bastrykin now proposes combining VPNs and artificial intelligence under the general term “information and communication technologies.” Journalists discovered the first criminal cases under this article in April 2026.
Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has introduced wartime censorship: hundreds of websites have been blocked. Since 2025, mass mobile internet shutdowns and blockages of the WhatsApp and Telegram messengers have begun. In May 2026, it became known that Roskomnadzor, Russia's communications watchdog, set a goal of blocking 92% of VPN services by 2030.