Why only some websites work
If only some sites open — usually Russian ones (Yandex, VKontakte, Sber, Gosuslugi (Госуслуги), marketplaces), while most foreign ones do not — this is usually not a failure of your internet connection. This is what it looks like when either a whitelist is enabled, a targeted block is in place, or there is a problem on the CDN side that hosts half of the “non-working” sites.
From the outside this is confusing: the internet “seems to be there”, the speed test page opens, a messenger sends messages, but Reddit, GitHub or Discord do not load. The fix depends on what exactly broke.
Below is how to tell these situations apart and quickly understand whom to trust: your ISP, your mobile operator, or the specific service. And how to check whether the same site opens for others right now.
In short
- If only sites from the “Russian list” open, whitelist mode has been enabled for you.
- If a set of sites using the same CDN does not open, it is an IP/range block or a CDN outage.
- If one specific site does not work for everyone, it is a block or a service outage.
- If it opens for your neighbor but not for you, the problem is DNS, routing, or the client device.
- Regional Roskomnadzor (RKN) “exercises” are a common reason why “only whitelists work” for hours at a time.
- A check through Freedom Checker immediately shows who can open it and who cannot.
Why only some sites work: the main reasons
In Russia, modern “no internet” almost never means literally “no internet”. The network is there, routes are present, DNS responds — but filtering lets only part of the traffic through. It is useful to distinguish these situations so you do not try to fix the router when the issue is RKN policy.
Whitelists
In some regions and at certain hours, an ISP may end up in a mode where “only sites from the socially significant list work”. This is the whitelist: Yandex, Gosuslugi, Sberbank Online, VK, OK, marketplaces, emergency services. Everything outside the list is unavailable. This is often enabled during “exercises” or during regional restrictions on mobile internet.
Blocking by CDN/IP range
Half of the world’s sites live on a few major CDNs: Cloudflare, Fastly, Amazon, Google Cloud. When RKN blocks an entire CDN IP range (which happens periodically), hundreds of unrelated resources “go down” together with the target site. If GitHub, Discord, Reddit, Stack Overflow, and Notion all stop opening at once, there is a high chance that this is a Cloudflare range block, not a separate block of each site.
Targeted blocking of one service
If one specific site does not open for everyone while neighboring sites work, it is either a targeted block (the site is in the registry) or an emergency service-side policy (access from Russia was closed by the service itself). From the outside, only a check through a VPN or through a service like Freedom Checker helps distinguish this.
Regional restrictions
In some Russian regions, “mobile internet with restrictions” is enabled — usually this means a whitelist and a slow channel. Most often this is connected with local decisions by regional authorities. It looks like “half the internet does not work for me in this district, but everything is OK in the neighboring one”.
Local DNS or route
Sometimes “some sites work” is not censorship, but your ISP’s DNS is down and only cached domains resolve. Symptom: ping by IP works, but by domain name does not. The fix is to change DNS to 1.1.1.1 or 9.9.9.9 in the device/router settings.
A VPN that does not route everything
If you have per-app VPN or split tunneling enabled, some apps go through the VPN and some go directly. From the outside this looks like “the browser opens it, but Telegram does not”, or the other way around. Check the client settings.
How to understand what exactly failed
| Symptom | Possible cause | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Only Yandex, Gosuslugi, Sber, and marketplaces open | A whitelist is enabled (regional restrictions) | Compare with regional news, try a VPN/proxy |
| GitHub, Reddit, Discord, and Notion are all down at once | Cloudflare/CDN IP range block | Check the same set of sites through a VPN |
| One specific site does not open for anyone | Targeted blocking or emergency denial from Russia | Compare via Freedom Checker across operators |
| It works for my neighbor, but not for me | Your ISP’s DNS or the router | Change DNS to 1.1.1.1 / 9.9.9.9, reboot the router |
| Some apps go through the VPN, some go directly | Per-app VPN / split tunneling is enabled | Check and correct the app list |
| It worked in the morning, went down at lunchtime — on several operators | “Exercises” or a temporary RKN policy | Wait and check again in a few hours |
How to check right now
The most useful action is to find out who else can currently access the same set of sites. Freedom Checker regularly checks popular resources from different operators, regions, and protocols. You can immediately see whether the site is down “for everyone”, only for your operator, or only for you.
If it is green for everyone but red for you, it is almost certainly DNS or a whitelist at your specific ISP. If it is red for everyone, this is already a general block, and a VPN or waiting helps.
Outage or blocking?
An outage usually affects technologically related sites at once and resolves on its own within tens of minutes or hours. If Cloudflare goes down, it is immediately visible globally, in the news, and on CDN status pages.
Blocking behaves consistently and lasts a long time: the same behavior for the same set of sites, not fixed by waiting, bypassed only with a VPN. Whitelists are a type of blocking enabled at the regional or operator level. If only the “socially significant” list works from any browser and app, you are inside that restriction, not dealing with “bad Wi-Fi”.
What to pay attention to
- First check through Freedom Checker — it saves hours of diagnostics.
- Change DNS to a public one (1.1.1.1, 9.9.9.9) — this rules out half of local problems.
- If a group of sites on one CDN does not work, it is a range block, not each site being blocked separately.
- Whitelists are often enabled and disabled by the hour — it is worth waiting.
- Region-locked services may return a blank page or 451 — this is not a bug.
- Per-app VPN and split tunneling are a common reason why “half works, half does not”.
- If the situation repeats on several devices in the same network, the problem is not the device.
Conclusion
“Only some sites work” is not one symptom, but a whole class of situations: from whitelists and CDN blocks to a simply dead DNS. They are fixed in different ways, so first it is important to understand which one you have right now.
The fastest way to do this is to look at the availability map by operators and regions and compare who else is seeing the same thing right now.