government-funded news websites such as Voice of America: 'The graph went from 1,000 one day to 10,000 the next day, to 30,000 the day after that, to 50,000 and straight up.' Martin Zhu, director of engineering at nthLink, said his app's daily users in Russia had recently soared after it was promoted heavily by U.S. Russia regulates certain Web resources, like many other countries in the world.' In a statement, the Kremlin rejected allegations of online censorship: 'We don't censor the Internet. Russia's foreign ministry did not respond to an emailed request for comment. 'With the Kremlin's escalating crackdown on media freedom, we've seen an extraordinary surge in demand for these tools among Russians,' USAGM spokesperson Laurie Moy said. It also did not give precise data on their funding.

In a statement, USAGM also said it was supporting the development of a range of censorship circumvention tools, including VPNs. Laura Cunningham, president of the OTF, said the organization had increased its support to the three VPNs because 'the Russian government is attempting to censor what their citizens can see and say online in order to obscure the truth and silence dissent.'Ĭensorship evasion tools, including the VPNs, backed by OTF averaged more than 4 million users last month in Russia, Cunningham added.

government-backed broadcasters, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – as well as via the Washington-based OTF, which is funded entirely by the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) – a federal agency that oversees U.S. Since February, the total funding allocated to the companies has increased by almost half in order to cope with the rise in demand in Russia, the five people familiar with the matter told Reuters. funding, according to publicly available funding documents reviewed by Reuters. 24.īetween 20, the three VPNs received at least $4.8 million in U.S. government-funded nonprofit organization that provided them with financing - the Open Technology Fund (OTF) - who said the anti-censorship apps have seen significant growth in Russia since President Vladimir Putin launched his war in Ukraine on Feb.

government-backed VPNs and two officials at a U.S. Reuters spoke to executives at all three U.S. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Register

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