How a Russian developer spent days getting Gemini to run — and what finally worked

A developer on Habr published an honest post about how he spent several days unable to get Google Gemini running from Russia, and what eventually helped. The post quickly gained hundreds of views: many people had been through the same thing.

Why Gemini is a special case

Google Gemini is officially unavailable in Russia, both as an app and through the API in Google AI Studio. In theory, a VPN gets around this. In practice, the problem turns out to have many layers.

Unlike other services, Google checks geolocation at several levels at once: IP address, account language and region, activity history, payment method, and the region set in the AI Studio console. Changing just one of them is not enough.

The author is an experienced programmer who can usually solve VPN problems in twenty minutes. Gemini took several days. That gap between expectation and reality is what makes the post so precise.

What did not work, step by step

The developer methodically recorded every attempt:

• Standard VPN services: many of the IP pools they use are blocked by Google at the infrastructure level
• Changing the region in account settings without an active VPN: Gemini kept seeing the real IP
• A main Google account with a long history of activity in Russia: an additional signal for blocking
• A new account without verification through a non-Russian phone number: Google requires confirmation
• An API key in AI Studio with the region set incorrectly: the key was created, but requests did not go through

Each iteration takes several hours: try, get an error, work out what exactly is wrong, reconfigure, try again.

What finally worked

The author found a working combination, and immediately cautions that there is no universal recipe: everything depends on the specific account, its usage history and the chosen provider. In his case, the key was a combination of several things: a VPN service that reliably works with Google (not all VPNs are equally good for Google infrastructure), an account with no Russian history, and the correct region set in AI Studio before making any API requests.

"I'm writing this because I was angry, didn't understand what was going on, and tried a pile of things that didn't work.

Maybe I'll save you some time."

The comments under the post have become a continuation of it: other developers share their own variants, clarify details, and describe cases where the same approach did not work and what they did instead.

Why this matters right now

Gemini is increasingly built into development tools: Gemini Code Assist in IDEs, an API for applied tasks, and integration into Google Workspace and Android Studio. The access gap between Russian and foreign developers is becoming noticeable. Several days of setup is not paranoia but a rational investment for anyone planning to use Gemini regularly.

In this situation, a post that breaks down the specific pitfalls is more valuable than the official documentation: Google does not explain what a user in Russia should do.

What this means

Posts like this are an important part of the ecosystem: personal experience with a full account of the iterations helps others save days of work. Access to AI tools from Russia remains a practical problem even for technically skilled developers, and until there is an official solution, the community's collective experience fills the gap.