I plan to work from Russia for a few months for a US company, I need access to Github, Notion, Discord, Linear. Should I plan to use VPN exclusively because not only is access with a Russian IP disabled, but accounts with Russian IPs in the log history are even closed. How best to plan this and which VPN to use if necessary?
If you need to hide your IP, then you’ll need a VPN. At some point, I was running my own, but stopped doing that. So I don’t know which public services are reliable. But you’ll certainly need one.
Particularly, Discord and Medium are blocked in Russia, and some other services (e. g. “AI” stuff, but also some shops, news outlets, etc.) block Russian IPs themselves.
If you have the ability I would highly recommend self-hosting a wireguard tunnel on some cheap VPS in the us. They blocked a lot of ips so you can get in a situation where your vpn won’t work
Don’t use public VPN for work. You should set up your own server. You can use outline, amnezia. Also it’s preferable to do so on your router rather than on your laptop. US companies restrict working from Russia nowadays and can block your access if your laptop loose VPN connection and connects to company’s resources directly.
To work in Russia where only VLESS is effective:
1. Rent a VPS abroad (e.g., DigitalOcean, Hetzner).
2. Install Xray/V2Ray with the VLESS protocol and enable TLS.
3. Use Domain Fronting (e.g., Cloudflare) to disguise traffic.
4. Set up the Xray/V2Ray client with your server config.
For simplicity, choose VPNs or proxies that support VLESS.
You might want to use remote desktop instead to the server outside of ru if possible.
Rent a VPS in a country other than Russia and deploy a self hosted AmneziaWG, and you should be good
Yes, you need. Because many sites are blocked by Russian Internet Providers plus many site-owners blocked access for Russian IP. For example mongodb.com, medium.com, linkedin.com, chatgpt and so
Be careful, a lot of western companies have very strict policies for working remotely, especially from countries like Russia. First, check if your company has a policy for this. Most likely it will be forbidden outright, but they might allow you with certain precautions like specific tools and protocols. If it’s forbidden, weigh in the risks, whether you should proceed with that at all. If you decide you do want to do it, be extra careful to not be caught by infosec of your company. Don’t use any public VPNs, especially well-known ones. Rent a VPS in the US, or set up a machine at your american home or at one of your friends. Tunnel to that VPS or machine with Wireguard or Amnesia. OpenVPN might work as well.
You definitely need a personal server. Maybe with some tinkering with protocols to make the best from Shadowsocks or XRay, but both works by default.
OpenVPN is blocked, Wireguard sometimes working fine, but mostly blocked as well.