Officially, the service is not available in Russia, but users circumvented these restrictions. According to “Base” data Several hundred people lost access to their accountswho have been using Claude for months to work with, analyze and architect complex projects. As compensation, users receive a refund for their subscription.
Artificial intelligence expert Dmitry Antipov in an interview with “Baza” suggests that The cause of mass blockades could have been the “gray zone” of connections. He believes Anthropic is doing internal optimization and tightening account verification could be part of that process.
Artificial intelligence implementation specialist Roman Adamenko believes it could have had an impact unstable internet connection combined with constant VPN switching and region changing. Anthropic may have considered such activity to be a violation of its model's terms of use.
The Kremlin is afraid of AI
The Russian authorities also want to deprive Russians of access to the latest artificial intelligence technologies. In March this year Moscow announced that it is preparing to restrict the operation of foreign neural networks in the country. This results from the draft act on the regulation of artificial intelligence technologies prepared by the Ministry of Digitization.
The document states that the operation of cross-border artificial intelligence technologies may be prohibited or limited. Owners of websites based on artificial intelligence whose daily number of users exceeds 500,000. people, they will have to store information about users in Russia for three years. The bill will likely enter into force on September 1, 2027.
As MWS AI lawyer Kirill Djakow notes, Foreign models such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini may be blockedbecause they forward user queries and dialogues to servers outside Russia. The document also introduces the concept of “trusted models”, which will have to meet FSB security requirements and process data only within Russia. Earlier, Vladimir Putin demanded the creation of a “sovereign” artificial intelligence model based on Russian culture, history, linguistic richness and “traditional values.”
