Moscow-based Kaspersky plans to shut down its Kaspersky Secure Connection VPN in Russia, starting with the free version on November 15, 2022
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer :
Context & Ripple Effects
Kaspersky's VPN shutdown inverts a familiar pressure. Back in 2019, Russia ordered ten major VPN providers — including NordVPN, ExpressVPN and Kaspersky itself — to block sites on the country's blacklist, forcing foreign services to choose between censorship compliance and exit. Now the Moscow-based vendor is exiting on its own side of that line, retiring Secure Connection in the market where it is headquartered, starting with the free tier on November 15.
The move lands mid-arc for a company already squeezed by geopolitics: after US and UK intelligence concerns prompted a partial relocation of core operations to Switzerland in 2018, Washington went further in 2024 with a Commerce Department sales ban and Kaspersky's subsequent closure of its US business. A security firm caught between two states' demands is shedding products rather than pick a side.
First-order effects
- Russian users of the free Kaspersky Secure Connection tier lose VPN service on November 15, 2022, with the paid version's fate left unstated in the announcement.
Second-order effects
- Other providers named in Russia's 2019 blocking order — NordVPN, ExpressVPN, TorGuard, IPVanish, Hola, OpenVPN — face the same binary Kaspersky just resolved: comply with blacklist enforcement or withdraw, which thins consumer VPN choice inside Russia either way.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, security vendors headquartered in geopolitically contested states progressively retreat from markets where regulators distrust them — Kaspersky has now exited or shrunk in both directions, mirroring its earlier Swiss relocation and the US ban — leaving national markets served by locally trusted or locally licensed providers.
The trend: Geopolitical trust barriers are fragmenting the global consumer security market, pushing vendors like Kaspersky to abandon products in jurisdictions whose regulators they cannot satisfy.