Russia may have started blocking ChatGPT
Starting on September 6, Russian users began reporting widespread issues accessing ChatGPT. Outages were reported in at least 27 regions, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Samara Region, Udmurtia, and Tatarstan.
According to Detector404, users are reporting that the ChatGPT website and app are unavailable, as well as difficulties logging into their accounts. One user stated that “ChatGPT has been blocked in Russia.”
At the same time, the problem likely did not originate on the service’s end. The IT resource Comss conducted a test from five connection points in Russia and found that the connection to ChatGPT’s main website—chatgpt.com—is interrupted before the request even reaches the company’s servers.
In all tested cases, the connection was lost during the TLS handshake, the stage of establishing a secure connection. However, access to other domains associated with ChatGPT, including openai.com, remained available.
Thus, the nature of the disruptions may indicate that access to chatgpt.com is being restricted at the level of Russia’s network infrastructure. There is currently no official confirmation that Russian authorities have begun blocking ChatGPT.
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