RZD website not working abroad? How to buy Russian train tickets

Many people who have moved abroad or are traveling find that the RZD website isn’t working abroad: rzd.ru, the site of Russian Railways, and its ticket booking page ticket.rzd.ru take forever to load, and then the browser says the server isn’t responding. People ask the same about the RZD Passazhiram (“RZD for Passengers”) app. Meanwhile, the websites of ticket sellers such as Tutu open as usual.

Below: why RZD won’t open from abroad, what our check from nine countries on October 3, 2026 showed, and how to buy Russian train tickets from abroad through official channels: from ticket sellers, through relatives, with a Russian SIM card, or at a ticket office. We also cover whether you can pay with a foreign card and what definitely won’t help.

Why the RZD website isn’t working abroad

There are three causes, and each has its own symptom. It’s worth figuring out right away which one is yours, because what to do next depends on it.

• A foreign IP address. The page takes a long time to load and then fails; the browser says the server isn’t responding or the connection timed out. RZD told Kommersant, a leading Russian business daily, that technical restrictions on access to its services from abroad have been in place since 2022 because of “unprecedented attempts at computer attacks” from addresses belonging to foreign internet providers.
• The certificate from Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development. On August 19, 2026, RZD moved its website and app to Russian security certificates issued by Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development. Chrome, Safari and Edge without the ministry’s root certificate warn that the connection isn’t secure — in Russia too, so the border has nothing to do with it.
• Payment. The site opens, but the payment doesn’t go through: major ticket sellers accept cards from Russian banks and SBP, Russia’s Faster Payments System, while with a card from a foreign bank, payment is either unavailable or may fail.

A simple test: if the RZD website won’t open even in Yandex Browser (partner link), the certificate isn’t the problem, because Yandex Browser accepts it. That leaves the address you’re connecting from, or a failure on RZD’s own side.

RZD not opening from abroad: what our check showed

On October 3, 2026, we checked whether www.rzd.ru and ticket.rzd.ru respond from nine countries with large Russian communities. We used Globalping, an open network of measurement probes — 2–4 probes per country, on home internet providers’ networks and in data centers — plus our own server in a data center in Tbilisi. For comparison, we added four probes in Russia.

The main takeaway from the table: the difference was between countries, not between network types. From Kazakhstan and Belarus, the site responded to both home-network and data-center probes, while from the other seven countries not a single probe could even establish a connection. Even where the site responded, its certificate was issued by the Ministry’s national certification centre: in Chrome or Safari without the Russian root certificate, the page will open with a warning.

How to buy RZD tickets from abroad

If the RZD website and app won’t open, you can still get a ticket. Here are the official ways.

From ticket sellers: Tutu, Yandex Travel, OneTwoTrip

RZD tickets are also sold by the carrier’s partners. Their websites aren’t official RZD resources, as Tutu states outright, but you get a regular e-ticket, and the price includes the partner’s service fee. The Tutu and OneTwoTrip websites opened in our check from Tbilisi (status code 200), and the Tutu home page also opened from home networks in Turkey, Germany, Thailand and the UAE. The main limitation is payment: you need a card from a Russian bank or SBP; details below.

Through relatives or friends in Russia

You can buy a ticket for someone else: the order uses the passenger’s passport details, and the buyer pays with their own card. If the ticket has to be returned, the money goes back to the card it was paid with. The e-ticket arrives by email, and a paper ticket form, if you need one, is issued only at RZD ticket offices and terminals in Russia.

With a Russian SIM card in roaming

Mobile data on a Russian SIM card abroad usually goes online through the Russian carrier. Beeline, a major Russian carrier, says as much on its roaming page: in roaming, “local restrictions won’t affect you,” and you won’t lose access to Gosuslugi, Russia’s government services portal, or to Russian banking apps. In April 2026, the vice president of the Association of Tour Operators of Russia advised travelers in Kommersant to keep a Russian SIM card with a data package, among other things to change tickets. The downsides: roaming data is expensive. We can’t check the RZD website over roaming from our servers: that needs a Russian SIM card in a phone. We cover how to keep your number abroad in our guide to keeping a Russian phone number abroad.

At a station ticket office

If you’ll be in Russia before your trip, you can buy a ticket at a station ticket office, which also issues discounted tickets, some of which aren’t sold online. Partners don’t sell everything: Yandex Travel, for example, doesn’t issue tickets for people with disabilities or to countries outside the CIS and the Baltics, and sends you to a ticket office for those.

With RZD Bonus points

The website of the RZD Bonus loyalty program, rzd-bonus.ru, opened in our check from Tbilisi. But the award ticket itself is issued on the RZD website, in the RZD Passazhiram app, or by phone, and booking by phone, according to the program’s website, “is temporarily unavailable for technical reasons.” So you can spend points from abroad only if the RZD website or app opens for you.

Can you pay for RZD tickets with a foreign card?

Not with the major sellers. Here’s what their help pages said as of October 3, 2026:

If you don’t have a Russian card, two options remain: pay via SBP from a Russian bank’s app if you still have an account, or ask relatives to buy the ticket for you. And if your bank itself won’t open abroad, start there: how to log in to SberBank Online and T-Bank from abroad.

Does the RZD app work abroad?

The RZD Passazhiram app gets schedules and seats from RZD’s servers, so it most likely runs into the same restrictions as the website: in its comment to Kommersant, RZD spoke about restricting access to its services from abroad in general, with no caveat about the website. We didn’t test the app itself from abroad. Its connection error reads: “The server isn’t responding… Check your internet connection settings. If a VPN is on, turn it off and try again.” RIA Novosti saw this message on the iPhones of users in Russia after the certificate change, so on its own it doesn’t mean you have a VPN on.

• Android. According to RZD, the app works without extra certificates, but you need the current version from RuStore, Google Play or Huawei AppGallery — older ones may not work.
• iPhone. The app has been missing from the App Store since December 1, 2023. RZD distributes the current version through TestFlight, Apple’s testing platform, via a personal link from the ios.rzd.ru page. Since August 19, 2026, the iPhone app has required the Russian root certificates from Gosuslugi.

The ios.rzd.ru page opened in our check from Tbilisi, unlike the main website, though it also uses a certificate from Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development.

RZD website not opening in Chrome or Safari: the certificate issue

This failure has nothing to do with the border: it happens in Russia too. Since August 19, 2026, RZD’s website, app and web app have run on security certificates from Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development, and Chrome, Safari and Edge without the Russian root certificate don’t accept them. RZD offers two fixes:

• open the site in Yandex Browser, where RZD’s services work without extra steps on both computers and phones;
• open the site in Yandex Browser, where the certificates are already built in.

Experts disagree about installing the Russian root certificate: some warn that it theoretically makes traffic interception possible. Yandex Browser has the certificate built in, so the sites you need open there without any extra steps. The same thing happened to the websites of several of Russia’s largest banks in early August 2026.

When a Russian IP address can help

If RZD refuses connections specifically from foreign addresses, it makes sense to try a Russian one: in our check, the site responded to probes in Russia both on home networks and in a data center. A Russian IP address abroad is a VPN with its exit point inside Russia, a “reverse VPN.” We explain how it works in a separate article: why you need a Russian IP address after moving abroad.

Liberum VPS provides a shared Russian IP address on a server in a data center. On October 4, 2026, the RZD site responded through the Russian location of Liberum VPS. The browser may still show a certificate warning, so open the site in Yandex Browser. But since April 2026, Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development has required Russian platforms to keep out users with a VPN turned on, and a service may take a shared address on a data-center server for a VPN. So whether the RZD website and app open for you depends on your own device: the website is confirmed through the Russian location, and the app can only be checked on a phone.

What won’t help

• Another browser, incognito mode, clearing the cache. If no connection to the server can be established, the browser never gets a say.
• Yandex Browser and certificates from Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development, if you’re abroad. They remove the “connection not secure” error, but they don’t change the country of your IP address.
• A VPN with an exit in Europe. To RZD, that’s still a foreign address: from Germany, the site didn’t respond to any of our four probes.
• Reinstalling the app. If the server isn’t responding, the app isn’t to blame. Updating it only matters for working with the new certificates.
• Another network in the same country, most likely. When Russian services won’t open, Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development advises switching from hotel Wi-Fi to local mobile data or another carrier. But with RZD, in our check, home and data-center networks in the same country behaved the same way.

Key takeaways

• The RZD website and app often won’t open from abroad: RZD says it has restricted access to its services from abroad since 2022.
• On October 3, 2026, the site responded to our probes in Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, but in seven other countries it didn’t respond to a single one; the network type made no difference.
• The “connection not secure” error is a separate issue: certificates from Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development since August 19, 2026. Yandex Browser or the certificates from Gosuslugi fix it.
• You can buy tickets from abroad from sellers such as Tutu, Yandex Travel and OneTwoTrip, but you’ll have to pay with a Russian bank card or via SBP.
• Without a Russian card, relatives in Russia can help: tickets are issued using the passenger’s passport details.
• On October 4, 2026, the RZD site responded through the Russian location of Liberum VPS, but the browser may show a certificate warning: open the site in Yandex Browser. The app can’t be checked from a computer; a phone checks it.