About 20 companies that own communications links running from Russia to Europe have signed a moratorium on expanding that capacity, RBC sources in the telecommunications industry said.

The moratorium was signed at a recent meeting with Digital Development Ministry head Maksut Shadaev focused on restricting VPN use, one source told RBC. Participants included MMTS-9 (MSK-IX), Transtelecom, the Russian mobile operator MTS, the Russian mobile operator Beeline, the Russian mobile operator T2, and Ufanet. The operators were not told how long the moratorium would remain in effect.

VPN traffic looks like foreign traffic to operators, one source explained. The Digital Development Ministry’s logic, he said, is that the bandwidth available for foreign traffic is limited and natural traffic growth will fill it up. “In the end, carriers themselves will try to fight VPN traffic, which looks like foreign traffic on their networks: they’ll either try to filter it or raise the cost of access to foreign services — in other words, put up an economic filter,” he said.

The authorities also expect that the moratorium on expanding international links will force foreign services that want to keep operating in Russia to install servers inside the country to avoid slower load times for their Russian users, the source added.

The Digital Development Ministry held several meetings with carriers and internet providers and persuaded them to clear all expansions of international network capacity with the ministry in advance, another RBC source said. Market participants will also submit monthly reports on cross-border traffic.

A third source said that operators currently coordinate expansions of international links with Roskomnadzor. The moratorium represents an additional layer of approval, he said, for which the Digital Development Ministry would need to obtain the relevant authority through amendments to legislation or a government decree.

Representatives of the companies that agreed to the moratorium did not respond to RBC’s requests for comment. The Digital Development Ministry could not be reached for comment before publication.

Digital Development Ministry head Maksut Shadaev said in late March that his ministry had been tasked with reducing VPN use in Russia. The Russian business daily Kommersant reported on March 31 that Russian authorities had threatened IT companies with the loss of their tax benefits and their employees’ military draft deferments if they continued to allow VPN traffic. In mid-April, major Russian services stopped loading for users with VPNs active.