BLOOMBERG - Bloomberg

Russia's VPN Crackdown Causes Nationwide Banking Outage, Economic Losses Russia's efforts to block VPNs have led to a nationwide banking outage, affecting Sberbank, VTB, and T-Bank. The disruption caused Moscow's metro to open turnstiles for free and forced a regional zoo to request cash payments. Pavel Durov, Telegram's founder, criticized the Kremlin's actions, noting that attempts to block VPNs inadvertently disrupted banking infrastructure. The outages resulted in Moscow's economy losing an estimated 3 to 5 billion rubles (32 to 54 million euros) over five days. Russian companies have complained to President Putin about the internet restrictions causing these disruptions.