Anthropic’s new Supported Regions Policy goes into effect on November 12th. Company in official document has identified categories of users who are prohibited from accessing the service. The ban applies to Russian users and those who work for Russian companies.
Image source: Anthropic
Anthropic’s new policy applies to Claude.ai, Claude Code, Cowork, the official API, as well as models provided through cloud platforms and authorized resellers. Access through AWS Bedrock also does not allow you to bypass these restrictions. The key change is that the assessment criteria now cover not only the method of access, but also three other aspects: the physical location of the user, where the company is registered and who actually exercises control over it:
The first category includes users physically located in unsupported regions – even if they work for a compliant international company but are on a short-term business trip, they are prohibited from using Claude. The second category concerns organizations registered or headquartered in non-supported regions. The use of Claude by employees of such companies is considered a violation, even if the employees themselves are currently physically located, for example, in the United States. The third category concerns issues of capital and control: if an organization is directly or indirectly controlled by an individual or company from a region where the service is not supported, its access to the product is limited. At the same time, the threshold of control is not limited to only an ownership share of more than 50%.
The new security monitoring system stores 30 days of data and identifies risks based on behavioral factors such as time zones in which requests are made and linguistic variations. Anthropic said it suspended 11.4 million accounts in the first half of 2026 and received 398,000 appeals.
Previously, in September 2025, Anthropic prohibited the use of Claude by foreign organizations that are controlled by companies from China or other regions where the service is not supported. The current changes are aimed at more clearly articulating three criteria – the location of the user, the jurisdiction of the company and the nature of control – which simplifies the application of these rules in practice.
The tightening of the rules for access to Anthropic services coincides with the company’s preparation for going public. An S-1 filing with regulators showed that in the last nine months, 5% to 7% of revenue came from customers who were later found to have violated the rules. Cleaning up this revenue stream, preparing a more transparent prospectus for Wall Street, and plugging leaks of key technologies are the main reasons for the current wave of account bans.
For developers, the immediate consequences are primarily related to business continuity. Teams using the Claude API to build their products will need to evaluate whether their capital structure and jurisdiction of incorporation are subject to these restrictions. They should also export their prompt and conversation history as soon as possible to prepare for possible migration to other platforms.
In the long term, formalizing regional restrictions may accelerate the exodus of some users to other providers – especially for international teams with complex capital structures that will have a difficult time passing compliance checks. For Anthropic itself, voluntarily giving up problematic revenue may have a short-term impact on financial performance, but it helps reduce regulatory risks in the process of preparing for an IPO.
Market-wide, the trend towards regional segmentation of access to AI models is becoming increasingly evident. Cloud platforms are no longer seen as a “buffer” to circumvent restrictions. This means that business models that previously accessed Claude through overseas entities or third-party distributors are being forced to go through restructuring. In addition, rising compliance costs will inevitably impact product pricing and adoption schedules for end application developers.
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