- August 15, 2026
- 3:46 pm
- World News
Israelis report that Yandex Mail, Mail.ru, and other Russian services are no longer accessible. Behind the usual ‘mail not working’ lies a much more unpleasant story: Russia was building a digital wall to control its citizens’ access to the external internet, and now this wall is starting to hinder access to the Russian segment for people from abroad.
In Israel, there are complaints about issues with Yandex Mail and Mail.ru. NAnews checked how this is related to Russia’s fight against VPNs, foreign IP filtering, and the construction of the ‘Cheburnet’.
In the morning, a woman living in Israel opens the mail she has used for many years and cannot log in. Her pension funds, Google, YouTube, neural networks, educational platforms, and parcel notifications are tied to this address. Almost immediately, the question arises in the discussion: ‘And you?’ Another person writes that along with the mail, ‘Alice’ and Russian websites were not working.
A regular internet outage? Possibly.
But nine days ago, NAnews already encountered another part of the same strange new reality: Israelis began experiencing problems with Russian banks after some of their websites switched to the Russian digital certificate system. We then titled the material ‘Russian “Cheburnet” reaches Israelis’. Now, instead of banks, complaints are about email and regular internet services.
Victoria Katsman is originally from Ukraine, lives in the Israeli context, and regularly writes for NAnews about events connecting Ukraine, Israel, and the post-Soviet space. For this publication, the editorial team did not attempt to diagnose the network from a single screenshot: we compared user complaints from Israel with current monitoring data, Russian authorities’ April decisions on VPNs, publications from the Russian tech industry itself, and how the Kremlin is restructuring the internet within Russia in 2026. Victoria is not a network engineer, so where the technical cause of today’s outage is not yet proven, it is clearly marked as a version, not an established fact.
What’s happening with Russian mail on August 15
During the check, NAnews service Detector404 showed an unusual picture for Yandex Mail. Automatic sensors did not record a global service outage, the SSL connection was determined to be secure, but all normalized regional user messages for the last hour were from Israel. In the comments, there is a complaint from August 15: ‘The letter is not sent. Empty box,’ and another entry reports that the mail stopped opening on August 14.
With Mail.ru, the geography was broader. At the time of our check, Detector404 showed complaints from Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Israel, and the Rostov region. A separate comment from August 15 at 12:17 is extremely simple: ‘Israel — Does not open.’ The same was written from Spain on the same day, and from Serbia too. At the same time, automatic sensors again did not show the complete disappearance of Mail.ru from the network.
This is an important detail. When a large service’s servers go down, the problem is usually noticeable to users regardless of the country. Here the picture is different: the resource itself exists, but some people from certain networks or countries cannot reach it properly.
And here begins the most interesting part.
Russia itself taught its sites to suspect foreign IPs
In the spring of 2026, Russian authorities sharply intensified the fight against VPNs. Reuters wrote that by mid-January, Russia had blocked more than 400 VPN services, and the Minister of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev openly formulated the task at the end of March: the use of VPNs must be reduced. Simultaneously, WhatsApp was blocked, Telegram was slowed down, and mobile internet was turned off or restricted in Moscow and other regions.
But for our current Israeli story, something else is more important.
In early April, the Ministry of Digital Development sent methodological recommendations to the largest Russian internet companies on identifying VPNs. Among the companies mentioned in reports about meetings and new policies were ‘Yandex’, VK, Sber, Wildberries, Ozon, ‘Avito’, and other major platforms. The system should start with the user’s IP address: determine it and compare it with addresses considered Russian, as well as with ranges blocked by Roskomnadzor. A mismatch with Russian geography becomes one of the signs requiring further verification.
On paper, the logic is clear. A Russian turns on a VPN, chooses a server in Tel Aviv — the Russian site sees an Israeli IP and tries to determine if a means of bypassing blocks is being used.
But what does the same site see when a real person from Haifa comes to it through a regular Israeli provider?
Also an Israeli IP.
It is here that Russia’s fight against VPNs unexpectedly ceases to be only a Russian internal problem.
This has already happened. And Mail.ru was on the list
On April 15, the Russian publication Hi-Tech Mail published material with a very eloquent subtitle: it was about sites and applications that cannot be opened from foreign IP addresses.
The Hi-Tech Mail editorial team noted that since mid-April, users began reporting the inability to access Russian services from foreign IPs. Moreover, the problem arose both with VPN enabled and for people who were actually abroad.
This is a completely different level of evidence.
The list compiled by Hi-Tech Mail included directly Mail.ru. VK, MAX, ‘Gosuslugi’, banks, marketplaces, Russian Railways, and several ‘Yandex’ services: ‘Yandex Browser’, ‘Yandex Maps’, ‘Yandex Weather’, ‘Yandex Pay’ were also there.
So, four months before today’s complaints from Israel, the Russian tech press had already recorded the mechanism itself:
foreign IP — Russian service — access problems.
Moreover, it turned out to be a noticeable enough phenomenon that on April 27, the Russian Ministry of Digital Development separately commented on the situation. The agency stated that Russian services should remain accessible to users abroad, but at the same time confirmed: the largest platforms do indeed restrict access when using VPNs, explaining this by protecting user data.
For NAnews — News of Israel, an important boundary of proof passes here. We cannot yet assert that today’s Yandex Mail did not open for a specific resident of Israel precisely because her address was mistakenly taken for a VPN. For such a conclusion, network logs, IP, routes, and the service’s response are needed.
But it is no longer possible to say that the hypothesis itself came out of thin air. The Russian filtering system exists. IP verification exists. Problems of real users abroad have already been recorded. Mail.ru was among the services complained about. And today complaints are coming again from abroad — including from Israel.
What about Israeli providers then
In the comments that came into the editorial’s possession, the version appeared almost immediately: ‘Do you have an “Israeli provider“? There were problems with it today.’
It cannot be dismissed. A routing disruption between a specific Israeli operator and Russian networks could indeed produce a similar result. DNS might be wrong, a specific route might not pass, the Russian side might poorly accept a certain range of addresses from one operator.
But there is a problem: Mail.ru is being complained about not only from Israel today. Detector404 simultaneously showed Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Israel, and Spain appeared in the comments. It is no longer possible to explain all this geography by a malfunction of one Israeli Partner.
There is another version, which remains just a version for now: the “Israeli provider” may not be the one blocking something, but the owner of an IP range that the Russian side for some reason passes worse. Anti-VPN, anti-DDoS, and anti-fraud systems do not work with a person’s passport — they see the address, network, geography, connection history, and other technical signs.
For a final check, a very simple field test is needed on several users: the same Yandex Mail through a home “Israeli provider“, then through the mobile network of another operator, then again without changing the account. If the service systematically revives when changing the network, the circle of suspects narrows sharply.
So far, the editorial team does not have enough such data.
The ‘Cheburnet’ has changed: the wall now works both ways
Not long ago, the expression ‘sovereign internet’ meant a fairly understandable thing for most people: Russian authorities do not allow a person inside Russia to open an external site.
Facebook is blocked. WhatsApp is blocked. Telegram is slowed down. VPNs are persecuted. During communication restrictions, some internal services must continue to work. On June 1, 2026, Putin even instructed the government and the FSB to ensure the operation of key medical, informational, and payment services during periods of mobile internet restrictions.
But isolation is never one-sided.
When the state learns to determine which traffic is ‘its own’, which is ‘foreign’, which to allow without a VPN, and which to force to undergo additional checks, it effectively builds a digital border service. And at such a border, not only a Russian trying to go outside can get stuck.
An Israeli trying to enter can get stuck.
Reuters reported an even more remarkable detail in March: two Russian sources familiar with the authorities’ internet policy said that Moscow studied the experience of China and Iran, developing ways to block large parts of mobile and fixed internet while maintaining control over communications.
After this, the word ‘Cheburnet’ ceases to be a successful joke from Runet.
Iran has already shown where this logic leads
The comparison with Iran is especially unpleasant for the Israeli reader — and not at all theoretical.
Iran has been developing its own National Information Network for years, allowing internal services to exist under strict global internet restrictions. And in 2026, the country demonstrated an almost extreme version of this model: after the war with the US and Israel, most Iranians remained without normal access to the global internet for 87 days. Only on May 25 did President Masoud Pezeshkian order the restoration of international access to begin.
Russia is not yet Iran or China. The level of technical and political closure differs, and mixing these systems would be incorrect.
But Russia itself is studying their experience. This is no longer a comparison invented by Kremlin critics — such information was obtained by Reuters from sources familiar with Russian internet policy.
From here, an unpleasant everyday question arises for an Israeli.
Would you voluntarily make an Iranian email address the main key to your digital life today? Would you link Google, a pension fund, password recovery, important documents, a family archive, and dozens of services to it?
Most likely, no.
Then why is a Russian address automatically considered reliable just because it was created twenty or thirty years ago?
Sanctions did not come for your mail. Russia itself came to isolation
Here it is convenient to blame everyone around.
Americans. Europe. Browsers. Israeli internet provider. ‘Unfair sanctions’. GlobalSign. Those who ‘politicize regular mail’.
But this story has a beginning.
Russia began a full-scale aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022. It was in response to the ongoing aggression that the EU imposed and extended sanctions regimes; on July 23, 2026, the EU Council adopted the 21st package of restrictive measures against Russia, explicitly naming the Russian war against Ukraine as the reason. Economic sanctions have been extended until July 31, 2027.
But it would be too convenient to attribute the entire ‘Cheburnet’ solely to the West.
Simultaneously, the Kremlin itself tightened internet censorship, expanded the powers of law enforcement agencies, blocked foreign platforms, closed VPNs, promoted state alternatives, and created an architecture in which individual internal services must continue to live even during large internet restrictions. Reuters notes that it was after the full-scale invasion of 2022 that the Russian internet control system became significantly stricter.
Therefore, today’s digital divide is not a natural disaster.
It is the price of the political choice of the Russian state: first war, then sanctions and technological isolation, and within Russia itself — accelerated construction of a controlled digital space.
Are there complaints that another Russian service is not working well from Israel? They should be addressed not only to Partner, Chrome, or Europe. It is worth remembering those who created the conditions under which the Russian part of the internet began to turn into a separate island.
And why live in Israel but remain a digital resident of Russia?
In the first message that started our check, perhaps the most important thing was not even ‘Yandex.Mail does not open’.
The most important thing is the list of what is tied to it.
Pension funds. Google. YouTube. Neural networks. Educational platforms. Parcels.
A person has long lived in Israel, but the main digital key to their life is still within the Russian infrastructure.
This is already a risk that cannot be fixed by another browser setting.
Russia is not formally at war with Israel, and diplomatic relations between the countries are maintained. But at the same time, Moscow and Tehran signed a 20-year Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement. It provides for closer cooperation in security and defense, countering common military threats, joint exercises, and further military-technical cooperation. Russia ratified the agreement in the spring of 2025, and then it was approved by the Iranian parliament.
For an Israeli resident, Iran is not a distant geopolitical abstraction.
Therefore, NAnews — News of Israel poses the question harshly: how reasonable is it to store a critically important part of your digital identity in the infrastructure of a state that is increasingly isolating its own internet and simultaneously deepening strategic relations with Iran?
Habit is a poor answer to the question of information security.
‘I’ve had this address for thirty years’ explains why it’s hard to give it up. But the thirty-year age of a mailbox does not give a thirty-year guarantee that the political and technical environment around it will remain the same.
A Russian already carries two phones. An Israeli is better off not waiting for this moment
Reuters described a new everyday reality inside Russia in the summer. People turn on VPNs for one service, turn them off for another, use several messengers, and sometimes keep a second phone for the Russian state digital environment. In April, government agencies, banks, and the largest trading platforms began restricting users with VPNs enabled; for Wildberries, this even coincided with a noticeable drop in internet traffic.
An Israeli has no need to voluntarily build the same small ‘Cheburnet’ at home.
If Russian mail is still working, it does not need to be demonstratively deleted. It is necessary to stop making it the only point of failure.
It is worth creating an independent backup address, checking the recovery email at Google and other critical accounts, adding two-factor authentication where available, downloading really important emails and documents, checking where messages from pension and financial structures come, and most importantly — gradually removing Russian mail from the role of the only recovery key.
If the service suddenly stops working, it is first useful to check it through another network. This helps to understand at least the level of the problem: account, device, Israeli operator, or route to the Russian side.
And it is definitely not worth installing unknown certificates, browsers, or applications on the main phone from a link in a random comment just because someone promises to ‘return the Russian internet’.
What is proven — and what we do not yet know
As of August 15, several things are proven.
Fresh complaints about the operation of Yandex Mail and Mail.ru are indeed coming from Israel. Mail.ru simultaneously receives complaints from other foreign countries. Automatic checks by Detector404 do not show a complete global outage of both services.
Another thing is proven: in 2026, Russian authorities intensified the fight against VPNs and recommended that the largest internet companies analyze user IPs. Russian users and people physically located abroad have already faced the inability to open Russian sites from foreign IPs. Mail.ru and several ‘Yandex’ services were mentioned in such complaints back in April.
But there is no evidence of a special order to ‘disable Yandex Mail and Mail.ru in Israel’.
There is also no evidence yet that today’s specific case was caused by an anti-VPN filter. It is not proven that Partner is to blame. Routing errors, DNS, temporary attack protection restrictions, or a combination of several reasons are not excluded.
Therefore, the word ‘attacks’ in our headline is not a statement about a Russian cyberattack against Israel. It is a characterization of how the consequences of building a Russian isolated internet space are increasingly reaching people who physically live far beyond Russia.
Nine days ago, it was banks. Today — mail. What’s next?
On August 6, we wrote about the Russian ‘Cheburnet’ through the story of a browser warning: ‘The browser does not trust this site’. Russian banks were switching to their own state certificate system, and Israelis risked losing convenient access to accounts, pensions, and documents.
August 15 brings the next chapter.
Now a Russian service can look at a person from outside and, roughly speaking, respond: ‘I’m not sure I trust your address.’
In the first story, the global internet stopped trusting part of the Russian digital infrastructure.
In the current one, the Russian infrastructure itself is becoming more suspicious of the global internet.
Between these two processes sits an ordinary person in Israel trying to open a mailbox that was created back when there was no ‘Cheburnet’, war, sanction packages, or strategic alliance between Moscow and Tehran in their daily life.
But times have changed.
Russia wanted to achieve ‘digital sovereignty’ and the ability to control the border of its internet. Such a border is gradually appearing. But any wall has two sides: one prevents people from going out, the other — from coming in.
And perhaps the main conclusion for Israelis here is not technical at all.
Living in Israel but leaving pension money, documents, Google recovery, and half of your digital life on a single Russian email address in 2026 is no longer a habit. It’s a risk.
And if you want to ask who made this risk a reality, it’s worth starting not with the browser.
It stands from the war that Russia started against Ukraine, and from the state that after this decided to isolate itself from the world with an increasingly high digital wall.