Sanctions shut down the Russian bulletproof hosting operations

Assessment

The documented precedent runs the other way. Aeza Group, a Russia-based bulletproof hosting provider, was sanctioned by OFAC in July 2025. It continued operating through Hypercore Ltd, a UK-registered front company — a fact that only became public in the November 2025 designations, which named Hypercore alongside Serbian and Uzbek companies providing technical support. Four months after being sanctioned, the operation was still running, through a corporate wrapper registered in a sanctioning jurisdiction. There is no published evidence that the November 2025 designations ended Media Land's operations either. The indictment was unsealed eight months later, and the State Department simultaneously offered up to $10 million for information — neither of which suggests the target had ceased to exist. What sanctions demonstrably do is raise operating costs, complicate banking, and expose counterparties to secondary risk. That is attrition, and it is worth doing. It is not a takedown, and describing it as one sets an expectation the instrument was never designed to meet — which matters, because the follow-on question of whether to keep applying pressure depends on measuring it honestly.