Forkagro Under Pressure: What’s Behind the Access Issues and Why It Affects Everyone
Since June 2025, users of the Forkagro website have been reporting widespread access issues. Pages load slowly, images and videos fail to appear, and visitors are sometimes asked to "prove they're not a bot." As it turns out, the problem isn't local — it's linked to the targeted blocking of IP addresses belonging to Cloudflare, one of the world's largest CDN providers. What’s going on — and who’s behind it?
Under Surveillance: Cloudflare and Roskomnadzor
Cloudflare is a US-based company that provides DDoS protection, caching, and fast content delivery across the globe. Millions of websites rely on it — including Forkagro, a platform focused on the agricultural sector in Russia, Europe, and China.
However, starting from June 10, 2025, a significant portion of Cloudflare’s IP addresses was added to the Russian federal blocklist maintained by Roskomnadzor, according to technical and media sources. Internet providers were instructed to filter traffic to these addresses. The result? A sharp (~30%) drop in Cloudflare service availability across the Russian internet.
How Forkagro Was Affected
Forkagro isn’t just a blog or a landing page. It’s a large-scale educational and informational platform with tens of thousands of unique visitors daily.
Here’s the data for June 23, 2025:
5,820 unique users per day / 245,110 HTTP requests / 7 GB of daily traffic / Audience from Russia, Europe, and China
But once Cloudflare filtering began, users from Russia began to lose access en masse.
Traffic from China Rises as Russian Access Drops
Interestingly, traffic from the Chinese mirror site forkagro.cn remains stable — and is even growing:
185,110 real visits from China in just 72 hours.
This confirms the issue isn’t technical — it’s political and regulatory, specific to the Russian Federation.
Tough Choices: VPNs, Verification, and Content Restrictions
Forkagro has been forced to implement a range of unconventional solutions:
- “Are you human?” verification pages — a way to bypass aggressive filters.
- VPN recommendations — a necessary workaround for normal website loading within Russia.
- Switching CDNs and routes — Forkagro is migrating to alternative networks, though this is costly and unstable.
Responding to Common Complaints
Why not switch to domestic solutions?
Russian CDNs such as CDNvideo or G-Core Labs are 10 times more expensive and offer extremely limited coverage outside Russia. Attacks remain a threat — and defending against them requires resources we simply don’t have as a nonprofit project.
You built a big project, now you can't handle it?
On the contrary: Forkagro has thrived with minimal costs thanks to efficient use of global technologies. But after filtering began, we were forced to cut key features:
— educational videos via YouTube,
— interactive tools,
— access to global knowledge bases.
These were necessary sacrifices — not poor planning.
But you charge money — improve the service!
We don’t. Forkagro is completely free to use. But you can support us with a donation.
We’re still here — no matter what.
We read your messages, understand your frustration, and are doing everything we can.
Right now, we are:
- testing alternative CDNs,
- deploying mirrors in new regions,
- optimizing routing paths.
We’re not looking for someone to blame — we’re adapting. We believe truth and transparency are the best weapons in the age of digital censorship.
Forkagro won’t shut down. We’re just forced to evolve.
🙏 Thank you for standing with us.
