Why sites won't open and what to do about it
How sites and VPNs are blocked in Russia, what mobile carriers' whitelists are, why throttling happens, and which bypass methods work in 2026.
"The site won't open" sounds the same every time, but the causes differ. What helps depends on the cause. Here's the map.
Blocking by address
The oldest method: the provider gets a list of addresses and doesn't let you through to them. Any VPN gets around it, because the provider sees only the connection to the VPN server, not where you go after.
Throttling
The site opens, but video spins and pictures take a minute to load. That's not blocking but an artificial speed limit for a particular service. Through a VPN the traffic looks different and the throttling doesn't trigger.
Blocking the VPN itself
The provider's equipment can recognise a VPN by the protocol's fingerprint. Old protocols like PPTP and L2TP are visible at once, OpenVPN and WireGuard get cut too. What works are protocols that pretend to be ordinary HTTPS to an ordinary site: from the outside it's indistinguishable from opening a page. Surok has several such ways in, and we switch them when one starts to stall.
Mobile carriers' whitelists
The harshest one: the carrier lets you through only to a list of approved sites and cuts everything else, VPNs included. What helps is entering through a network that's on the whitelist. We have the "Europe · auto" server for that: it works on mobile carriers. It's slower than usual, but it opens everything where nothing else works.
What to do, step by step
- Check on "What's my IP" whether your traffic goes through Surok. If the address is your real one, the VPN is off or didn't connect.
- Switch the server: first "All Europe", then the backups, on mobile the "whitelist bypass".
- If only one site fails while others open, it's the site itself: it may block VPN server addresses. Try another exit country.
- If nothing works anywhere, tell us: name your carrier and region. That's how we learn about new blocking before anyone else.
Why we don't promise "always works"
Because nobody can. Blocking changes, and whoever fixes things fastest wins. We keep several ways in ready and check the servers every five minutes.