My experience trying to set up an eSIM for travelling in Russia

[Markus]

Hello all, I went through the whole process last week, so figured I'd share what I found rather than just asking questions. Getting an eSIM for travelling in Russia turned out to be more complicated than I expected. Most of the well-known providers (Airalo, Holafly, that kind of thing) either flat out don't cover Russia anymore or have very patchy data on which networks actually work on the ground. I ended up spending a good two hours reading through forums and Reddit threads from 2023-2024, and the situation seems genuinely unclear depending on where you're headed. Some people report solid 4G in Moscow and reasonable coverage elsewhere, others had nothing workable outside the main cities. What I couldn't find was a reliable, up-to-date answer about which specific provider is still actively selling functional eSIM plans for Russia right now, not six months ago. If anyone here has done this recently and found something that actually works, I'd genuinely like to know before I board that flight.