Hey there, i'm sure this has been asked countless times...
How feasible/good idea is it to go to russia at the moment? I'd love to see the country (cities + some more rural areas maybe), what's your advice? Do or don't? I'm a german, i speak 2 words of russian

Hi, you can come without any issues
I am based here right now, you can ask any specific question if you have

Nice! Will people understand english in cities? Any visa problems?

No, most of them don’t know English

But maybe you will have less issues in Moscow and St Petersburg

Phone Translation will work i assume? I also have a friend von kazakhstan, maybe i can convince hin to come with me 😁

Sure :)

In september i'll be in latam... Would cone next year, jan/feb. In the coldest Winter 😁

Jan is better than:)
Moscow will be decorated beautifully:)

Entering if you have a visa shouldn't be an issue, just be aware that there are are limited number of countries with flights in and out of Russia.

Maybe you are aware, but a few notes anyway:

- random people don't speak English, translation apps are easy enough and they aren't being impatient

- your existing banks and cards do not work anywhere, just pretend they don't exist and bring enough euros or USD (cash) with you for your entire trip

- moscow and saint petersburg are fairly cashless, many bars, stores, restaurants assume you will pay with card or other electronic payment method. They may switch to cash I'd you ask

- getting a local bank account is very easy to do online and a person will hand deliver your new bank card, this allows youe to deposit cash into ATM and then pay for things using a card and RUB... It just requires that you have a local sim card / local phone number that nobody else is already registered to a bank account

- getting a local sim card / phone number is basically impossible unless you have a local friend who lends you their spare sim card that they purchased in their name

- if you can solve local sim card and banking, then delivery and transport apps become available and make your life much easier, the apps are only partially treanslaed to English though so be prepared to translate screenshots from time to time.

- getting data is easy enough using a roaming esim that specifically supports russia, likely one issued in Belarus, useful for data but not for registering for services

- most of the things you want to do on your phone are blocked and will not work with out a VPN to tunnel out of Russia

- most VPNs are blocked using very effective deep packet inspection at the internet service provider, this means that the VPN you already have probably doesn't work and will require some technical messing around

After 6 weeks in Saint Petersburg, that's basically the list of things I believe someone would want to know before they got here.

Great summary!

thank you 🫡

I was in Moscow recently and no issues, that summary is pretty good. I got a bank account and card thrugh T-bank site, it was quite easy, and they went to my apartment to give it to me, I don't know if it's still that easy.

I have a wireguard running at my girlfriends router and one on a vps. Those should be good enough right?

I think if it’s pure wireguard it won’t work, they catch it and block it

It may work on certain home internet connections (not all of them). It won't work on any mobile internet.

Mobile internet providers won't let you initialize ANY VPN connections to non-russian IPs. So one of the solutions is to have a Russian VPS (where VPN connections would not be restricted) as an intermediate layer. And I am actually not 100% sure even this will work, cause maybe they blocked all known VPN protocols completely at this point.

If you want to connect directly, you need a solution with traffic obfuscation (XLTS/REALITY)

Oh wow

Yes, they've adopted all the techniques from China 😅

My vpn works with mobile internet

What protocol?

Wireguard + xray

Well xray does the obfuscation part, so yeah, this one will work 😄

Vps out of Russia

Oh, by the way
There’s no more calls via whatsapp and telegram since 1st September (text and voice messages are available still)

Just use Tailscale

You're in the Russian chat, so I assume is Russia. My friends in Moscow just texted me that they are hearing same things there

Legally no :)

You need to stablish and accountable place for any legal boundaries of your company.

They want to force everybody to switch to the new government-controlled "national" messenger app. That's the main reason. Telegram is used widely in Russia, but the govt has no control over it and they don't like that.

Apparently not

Telegram has a difficult relationship with the gov but I think they have an agreement in principle. The new messenger would be much easier to control for sure

To be clear, the buttons and functions are there inside the apps still. Telegram and WhatsApp.

At least they are for me.

The network won't accept the traffic for the call feature so the feature is broken.

(Without a VPN)

Its unclear exactly what traffic signature features they are filtering for and blocking at this early stage.

Hi! How difficult is it to get money from crypto into rubles when you're staying in russia as a nomad? I know that the best way is just to bring cash but I want to consider this option as a possibility as well in case I'm running out of cash or something because I'm considering going for 2-3 months

I've seen this one being actively promoted recently:
https://antarcticwallet.com/

In Russia, you can pay with a QR code instead of a card (probably in around 75% of places). This one is a telegram app that you can top up with crypto, and then pay using a QR code scanner.
In theory, this looks like the easiest option for foreigners to me, although I've seen some reports that it doesn't work as smoothly as expected (some people reported that their money "disappeared"). Still, probably worth a try for smaller purchases.

Otherwise, it's only crypto p2p as usual, either to a bank account or to cash. Cannot help here much, haven't done it myself.

Thank you! 🙏🏻

https://www.bestchange.ru/list.html

I signed up and tested this one out today.

After adding my passport and verifying my phone number I was able to send USDT(TRC20) and USDT(TON) from another wallet to the service and then sell if for RUB sent to my Russian bank account via phone number (SBP).

Much easier than my experience with unreliable sellers on P2P exchanges.

I haven't had a chance to test out the QR payments at point of sale yet.

hey friends, i rented an apartment in moscow i found from cian.ru for 1 month, i paid for it and chatted with the ‘owner’ outside of the platform cian. and i paid before i checked it properly, the apartment is dirty and the bathroom is smelling of pee, it’s disgusting, they sent a cleaner, its better now but still reeks of pee in bathroom, they didn’t clean under the washing machine furniture etc, the owner is refusing to refund me or properly clean it, is there anything i can do to get my money back, any place i can report? i have videos and chat logs etc, or there’s nothing i can do and count it ad an expensive lesson?

I can think of bad review with all proofs only…

Does anyone know how the city is rated? It seems like it's just some random numbers that can't be trusted.

Better to check first before paying for the whole month

Any

What are you looking for? I can give you a fair advice

Spammer got in