Access to GitHub is starting to be restricted in Russia

Access to GitHub is starting to be restricted in Russia

Internet censorship monitoring service OONI has recorded a drop in the availability in Russia of GitHub, the largest platform for hosting IT projects and collaborative development, Vyorstka noticed.

The service's availability began to decline on May 5, when the number of anomalous and failed connections to the site rose to 10%; on May 6 the figure reached 16% and continues to remain at that level. Earlier in April, the average level of anomalies did not exceed 4%.

In other countries, for example the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, OONI data shows no such trend.

Some users also report difficulties connecting to the platform from Russia. According to Downdetector, there are no major outages affecting GitHub, but Russians are leaving complaints about being unable to access repositories or download files.

In a conversation with Vyorstka, an expert from the RKS Global project noted that for now it is hard to say what exactly is happening with the platform's infrastructure.

“For example, this could indicate the start of SNI masquerading as GitHub. Or the authorities have begun more actively blocking the subnets of various CDNs, like Fastly, which has affected GitHub as well,” RKS said.

At the same time, GitHub is not in Roskomnadzor's register of banned websites, meaning the service is not officially blocked. However, more than 130 pages of the portal have already been added to this list by decisions of courts, Roskomnadzor, Rospotrebnadzor, and the Interior Ministry.

As Vyorstka found, the number of GitHub pages added to the register has surged sharply in 2026: since the start of the year, 61 pages have already been added. In all of 2025, 59 pages were added to the register, in 2024 there were 16, and across 2021-2023 there were only five.

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