Actually, they do work is Russia. You need account registered in some allowed country and also use RV plan (or maybe it is called 'roam' now). I know some ppl who use it. Was thinking to get one myself, to have a reliable bypass of pathetic russian firewall.
> to have a reliable bypass of pathetic russian firewall
All data shows that Russia have one of the strongest and best firewall in the world, in many aspects even better than in China. And all the Russians I spoke with say that VPN is not blocked and any service for a couple of bucks does its job.
Living in Chelyabinsk, I believe I'm rather capable to recognize the difference. Yekaterinburg is at least 300km from the nearest part of Kazakhstan (which up to a few days ago wasn't even officially permitted there). So no, there is no indication that there is any kind of geo-fencing for roaming devices, be them in Russia, China, Iran or Afghanistan.
> All data shows that Russia have one of the strongest and best firewall in the world
If you have a pile of shit in the world right in front of your house, it is pathetic, even if it is the biggest and the stinkiest pile of shit in the world.
> And all the Russians I spoke with say that VPN is not blocked and any service for a couple of bucks does its job.
I am Russian. This is not true. All regular vpn protocols (OpenVPN, Wireguard) are outright blocked. Shadowsocks is blocked on most ISPs, including all major mobile ones. VLESS works, for now, mostly, but sometimes the IP address of the server I run become unavailable.