Irena updated this guide
the title is a bit weird "Is It Safe?" well of course it is safe...
this is funny: "There are fewer Western tourists, so you probably won’t hear as much English in tourist spots."
"Western" means European and derived. Russians are European by the way. It is even the main European population of Europe. over 100 millions. Yes Western European tourists are a scarce amount now, excepted the regular Baltic Russians that fill the buses in Tallin and Riga. English was and is far from being the main European language heard among tourists in Russia. Typically it has been German, Italian, French, Polish. These days tourism is massively Asiatic. Thematic tourism keeps going in small amounts. End October in Vladimir I noticed groups of Germans by the cathedrals.
The good point is the lack of noisy flocks of barking Brits.
the point about roaming 24hrs lock: "Since October 6, 2025, Russia has applied restrictions to all foreign SIM and eSIM cards, which may cause a mobile data block during the first 24 hours after the first connection"
the block resets everytime a foreign SIM is connected to Russian networks. If the phone shuts down, or if you move the SIM into another phone, it is a shut off/on and the 24 hrs delay applies.
as for 4G, there have been since autumn 2025 local limitations, with only regular services working: Yandex Go, Karty, Navigator, RZD, Tutu, Ostrovok, etc, but otherwise not possible to browse generally on a phone. All good on wired internet in general.
These limitations are local. For instance I experienced it in Pskov, in Vladimir, but not in Tver nor SPb. Krasnodar, Novorossiysk have had also frequent limitations.
This is unpredictable, because related American drones swarms activities. For instance near Pskov because important aerial base, in Vladimir because it hosts some important sites related rockets systems. Krasnodar and Black sea coastal areas because attempts on Russian navy and oil storage units. Etc.
In Pskov area drones are clearly not launched from Ukraine but from Baltics.
Now this is unpredictable, depends American activity level in the war.
- VPN from this autumn have been more drastically blocked, not everywhere, but drastically, at the protocol level, not by IP ranges of known providers.
In case you need sometime to use your bank online and cards, for instance you have some forgotten unpaid bill, are watching an item on some auction site and need to proceed buying, whatever, and your bank does the 3DSecure authentication/confirmation online, not by SMS, then you need a remote connection option that works.
when in SPb end november, I needed to buy a return flight ticket Tallinn-Oslo (so bus SPb-Ivangorod). I am on Megafon, MTS or Beeline, so all good with 4G and it was not capped in SPb. My bank , ie. also the 3DS portal does block Russian IPs, so I activated the VPN on my phone, but then it would not go through. Tried few others no different. Inspected with a network tool that showed it was indeed a protocol block. Decided to buy directly from my account on Norwegian Airlines, by an option of direct withdrawal but I could not connect the site of Norwegian Airlines, because now it also does blocks Russian IPs.
I ended texting sister, so she bought the ticket for me.
Some VPN providers do offer an obfuscation mode. The one with ProtonVPN doesn't work. NordVPN may be better.
As I am Unix fluent, back home i just rented a cheap dedicated server, installed a Linux to run a strong obfuscated VPN server and also a VNC remote desktop.