Google has probably tightened technical restrictions for Russians: on Friday, August 14, the Gemini neural network completely stopped working in the Russian Federation.
Currently, the chatbot cannot be used either through the web version or through the mobile app. Moreover, even VPN services do not help to bypass the blocking - the restrictions were implemented directly by the company itself, Russian media reports.
Data from monitoring services confirms the massive nature of the problem. The outage detector graphs recorded a sharp jump in complaints from users from Russia, which began the previous evening and reached peak values in the morning and afternoon of August 14.
Over the past 24 hours alone, more than 1,400 requests for access have been recorded.
Shortly before the full block, Russian users briefly had access to the service without additional circumvention tools. However, Google refrained from official comment on this temporary "window".
The final access restriction coincided with the release of an updated version of the Gemini 3.7 Flash artificial intelligence.
Recall that the Gemini neural network was not officially intended to operate in Russia from the very beginning (since its launch in late 2023). The technology giant Google itself left the Russian market in 2022, and in 2023 it finally liquidated its local representative office.
However, Google recently obtained permission from Rospatent to register the Gemini trademark . It took the company two years and written permission from the Czech brand to do so.
