Gemini's VPN workaround stops working for some users in Russia

Google's Gemini AI tool has stopped working for a number of users in Russia, including some who were relying on VPN services to reach it. Complaints began appearing on the Downdetector website, and the outage was first reported by the Russian tech outlet Kod.ru.

Gemini had already been blocked for users connecting directly from Russian IP addresses, but the disruption has now expanded to affect people who were previously able to get around the restriction using a VPN. The timing coincided with the release of Gemini 3.7 Flash, a new version of Google's AI model.

Possible explanations

Experts consulted by Kod.ru offered a couple of technical explanations. One relates to how many VPN services are configured: by default, they often exclude google.com and other Google services from the encrypted tunnel so that search and email load faster. As a result, traffic to those services travels directly from the user's real IP address, revealing to Google that the person is actually located in Russia rather than in the VPN server's home country.

A second explanation concerns how Google identifies a user's location more broadly. According to the experts, the company increasingly relies not only on IP addresses but also on behavioral signals, including location data drawn from Google Maps. When large numbers of users from Russia repeatedly connect through the same VPN server, Google's systems may over time start associating that server's address with Russian jurisdiction, even though it is physically hosted elsewhere.