I can tell you that the number of VPN services installed since February has skyrocketed in Russia. People are looking for access to independent, objective information.
The entire media space in Russia has basically been cleansed. There is nothing independent or objective left anymore that is readily available to the majority of the Russian population.
People who have Internet access in Russia are trying to find ways to access that independent information. A countless number of Russian journalists were forced to leave the country, and they continue their very important work of producing informational content for the Russian-speaking population. By installing VPN services, the population get that access, so this is a very good measure to support countering propaganda.
We also need to consider one very important thing: Vladimir Putin knows how powerful a tool propaganda is. This is why he began his rule by closing down one independent TV channel after another. By 2003, the majority of the Russian population who rely on TV as their main source of information had no access to a single independent TV channel. That's since 2003. That's 19 years of hearing the exact same message over and over again: Russia is a great country surrounded by enemies; everyone out there wants to see us on our knees; everyone wants to see Russia's demise; and everyone out there hates you. It's been 19 years of that.
Since February, the last three remaining major media outlets—Radio Echo Moscow, the Dozhd TV station, which operated only online, and Novaya Gazeta—were all forced by the government to close down their operations. They moved outside of Russia and they continue their very important work, so they should be supported.
Vladimir Putin has been putting billions of dollars into his propaganda machine to maintain the level of aggression and misinformation in society that would allow him to continue with warmongering, severing the majority of the Russian population from real information about what is happening in Ukraine. The independent media outlets that have been forced out of Russia and are now operating from outside of course have nothing similar to the funding of propagandist media. Their funding cannot be compared, so their work needs a lot of support.