The funding flows through the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) – a federal agency that oversees US government-backed broadcasters, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – as well as via the Washington-based OTF, which is funded entirely by the US government and overseen by the USAGM. Since February, the total funding allocated to the companies has increased by almost half in order to cope with the rise in demand in Russia, the five people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Reuters spoke to executives at all three US government-backed VPNs and two officials at a US government-funded nonprofit organization that provided them with financing – the Open Technology Fund (OTF) – who said the anti-censorship apps have seen significant growth in Russia since President Vladimir Putin launched his war in Ukraine on 24 February.īetween 20, the three VPNs received at least $4.8 million in US funding, according to publicly available funding documents reviewed by Reuters.
VPNs help users hide their identity and change their online location, often to bypass geographic restrictions on content or to evade government censorship technology. The financing effort is focused on three firms that build Virtual Private Networks (VPN) – nthLink, Psiphon and Lantern – and is designed to support a recent surge in their Russian users, the sources said. The US government has pushed new, increased funding into three technology companies since the start of the Ukraine conflict to help Russians sidestep censors and access Western media, according to five people familiar with the situation.
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