Hello dear friends
I wanted to ask what’s the best place to visit from moscow or SPB during mid June
1. Lake baikal (am afraid it’s too far)
2. Altai region
3. karelia and the lakes near SPB
4. Kaliningrad
5. Or maybe Sochi?

We have been to Russia 2 years back and absolutely loved SPB and murmansk.

I would choose between 1,2 and 3
Anyway you will use flights so I don’t see the difference between 1 and 2 options

Makes sense !!
But I am sacred of 8+ hours of domestic flights 😂
Also are 4 days enuf for altai/baikal?

I understand:)
You will get the flavour:)
My first trip to Altay lasted 2 days only. But I remember it still:)

wow! would you suggest i get in touch with a travel/tour plnner in altai/baikal or just do it on my own?

You need a guide 100%
It saves you lots of time

right! agree

Unfortunately no :(

defently not a sochi. Too many people at summer.

hi, does tg work in russia?

mostly no. you will need some vless/xray vpn. And maybe even further — some vpn that can bypass white lists blocks.
I used https://blancvpn.fyi/ru/ It was pretty reliable most of the time

you can also try to use proxies for tg

Yes, it does. But you can't make calls, only text

it's heavily depends on city and provider.

Just update iy to the latest version and it will work perfectly fine

Is there any hope to go to Moscow as a us citizen one day with no friends in Russia

telegram works alright with vpn

Yea I’m sure. It is really frowned upon.

History and entertainment wise it still is

My one family friend is going soon his wife is Russian and he’s from the US so even he has a lot of paperwork and lawyers involved just to get there

So most of the market is still tg?

People are forced to use max nowadays but most of the population of big cities using vpn anyway and for daily purposes preferably using tg

I disagree. Lots of people use Max except your friends group. Especially for phone calls. Because you can't call via telegram anymore

Maybe nowadays they do. Haven’t been there for couple years. Although I still call my parents via tg and WhatsApp. They are using vpn for 100₽ monthly

Is he going to move or going as a tourist?

Going as a tourist his wife is Russian

Not sure why it would be that extensive for him If he’s going as a tourist

Hi guys! By any chance does anyone know what’s the situation with the gas (95 or 98 octanes) between Rostov and Moscow? In which areas is it more easy/difficult to find it currently?

I am planning a trip to Saint Petersburg at the end of August and it is hard to find consistent information about what I need to do to get reliable Internet. I don't know anyone there so it would be nice to be a bit better prepared. eSIM is the way to go? Many people report that they didn't have mobile internet on the first day. The usual suspects VPN providers are blocked (NordVPN, Proton, ExpressVPN etc)? Local SIM + Yandex apps would be enough?

Yeah, an eSIM should work

VPNs are a bit unreliable there, and some of the popular providers are blocked, so I’d recommend getting a VLESS config

When I went a year ago I did data esim at the airport (forget the vendor but there were two counters side by side). This was Moscow but assume Piter is similar. Glad I did because my roaming esim didn't work for 24hrs...once my esim kicked in I mostly used that and didn't really bother with wifi and VPNs (I treat Russia like China, basically). Things may have changed in the past year but I would be shocked if there wasn't a desk at the airport. Lots of Chinese and Korean tourists visit...

Any Americans who successfully obtained their visa? Trying to figure out the process now

Did anyone also have problems to pay for the eVisa? Visa/Mastercard payments seem to not go through

get AmneziaVPN hosted in an Hetzner server for $5/m in Finland, you will get good speeds, thats what I'm using but I also have an home server with tailscale as a backup and this is just for WIFI, for mobile data things are way more complicated. You can follow info here russiable[dot]com/best-esim-russia I can confirm that all in there its updated

I paid yesterday successfully with Mastercard

Anything going on in moscow today?

you fancy it Sam?

Is the Siberia region easier for tourists? I am interested in Irkutsk.

what ids VLESS config?

you can message me, i own service that works, will share for free

I found trip.com useful for flights and abs hotels.

Being a Chinese booking site they work with international visa and MasterCard while showing the things that other international search booking platforms are not.

hey guys! I might need to fly to Russia next week because of a family emergency. I’ve heard of people getting their claude accounts blocked after using them from Russia. has anyone dealt with this? how do you usually handle it?

also, if anyone here works in digital marketing: what’s the situation with meta ads? is there still a risk of getting your ad account blocked if you log in from Russia?

Haven't been there recently, but read a lot about the situation with Claude.

Short story: you don't want to run Claude Сode/Cowork on your computer while staying/traveling in Russia (and other unsupported countries like China).
If we are talking just about the web version, there are some ways, but the chance of an accidental error there is high.

Buy a dedicated server from Hetzner or OVHcloud (specifically a dedicated server, as they tend to receive "better" IPs). Log in to Claude and run it only from there. An ideal option is a Windows server and a connection via RDP.
Even then, a small risk remains, as Claude may theoretically figure out where you're connecting from. So if you want to be in maximum paranoid mode (which is somewhat reasonable), connect to this server only via VPN (better a personal one).

After that, delete Claude apps from all your devices and clear cookies in all of your browsers.

Regarding Meta ads, it's probably not that harsh, but it can cause similar issues. Same as with many other Western services where money is involved. Two years ago, I had my Wise account blocked even though I never logged in to it (managed to unblock it when I left Russia, but wouldn't want to risk it again).

P.S. And don't forget that sending money to Meta may be considered financing of terrorism in Russia 😁

oh shi… thanks! I have an aws server in Singapore, so was thinking about using this 🙌

Better log in to Claude there now and start running something. A sudden switch of a machine+region may also be trigger for a check on its own. If you add another machine while working from the first one, it should be a little bit safer.

thanks! I run there Codex for quite some time already, will start moving claude there as well 🙌