One of the largest and best-known services told users on the evening of September 25 that blocking had intensified "since the start of the week." According to its team, restrictions peaked that day, with many users experiencing glitches or failing to connect at all.
Another service said it had been forced to replace eight servers in five days since September 21. Seven more VPN services warned of blocking and outages in their Telegram channels.
One project said Roskomnadzor, Russia's state communications watchdog, had blocked all of its foreign locations. Another service had the IP addresses of all its servers blocked.
The publication Verstka, which reported the accounts, did not name the services for security reasons.
Alexei Kozlyuk, chairman of the VPN Guild, told Verstka that the intensified blocking was an expected outcome of the elections. "By our observations, the pressure increased as early as the beginning of August. What is happening now we see as a continuation and a gradual escalation of that campaign," he said. According to Kozlyuk, the organization does not consider the current situation a fundamentally new wave, and some services have not noticed an increase in pressure.