[tor-relays] Is Tor Actually "Blocked" In Russia, or Are Some Users Unblocked for now?

[Neel Chauhan]

Hi tor-relays@,

While I don't live in Russia, nor are my parents from Russia (they're 
from India), today, I noticed these articles that some people noticed 
Tor is blocked in Russia (sorry for being late):

https://ntc.party/t/ooni-reports-of-tor-blocking-in-certain-isps-since-2021-12-01/1477
https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-blocked-in-russia-how-to-circumvent-censorship/982

Yet, when I look at Tor Relay Status, I noticed many relays hosted on 
Russian residential ISPs are still online, and only a few aren't:

Moscow City Telephone:
  *https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/as:AS25513

Rostelecom:
  * https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/as:AS12389
  * https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/as:AS42610
  * https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/as:AS34168

Vimpelcom:
  * https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/as:AS8371
  * https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/as:AS8402

MTS:
  * https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/as:AS60496

I didn't notice a big reduction in "relay" users on Metrics: 
https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?start=2021-09-06&end=2021-12-05&country=ru&events=off

But did see an increase in "bridge" users: 
https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html?start=2021-09-06&end=2021-12-05&country=ru

And most Ooni results still show Tor can connect fine: 
https://explorer.ooni.org/search?until=2021-12-06&since=2021-11-29&probe_cc=RU&test_name=tor

I feel it could be possible it's one of the two:

  * Most likely, the censorship rollout is in stages. Some users are 
blocked but other's aren't, where it wasn't rolled out is still 
unblocked.

  * Less likely, but Russia found people could use pluggable transports, 
like HTTPS obfs4 bridges and maybe they found blocking Tor itself is 
ineffective, or trying to block "meek" users ended up blocking Microsoft 
and ASP.NET/Azure-based webapps.

Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft, but not on Azure as of now. I did 
however interview for a position in the Azure umbrella (not on the CDN 
however).

-Neel Chauhan