Gambling addiction help in Russia

Verified helplines

Helplines and online chat

There is no national gambling helpline in Russia, and searching for one mostly returns paid private clinics.

The non-commercial option is АНО «Центр борьбы с лудоманией», a non-profit working on gambling addiction since 2020 for both people who gamble and affected relatives. It has no phone line: contact runs through its Telegram and VK communities, by email, or through the help request form at anocbsl.ru. Help is free.

Self-exclusion

Article 5.2 of Law 244-FZ, in force from 1 September 2026, gives you the right to refuse participation in gambling by asking the single gambling regulator to enter you in the list of people who have opted out. This is the first federal self-exclusion mechanism in Russia; before it, self-restriction existed only as an industry service run through the betting payments centre from October 2023.

How it works

• Where to apply: at any MFC, with a passport or other identity document, regardless of where you live; or through Gosuslugi as an electronic document with an electronic signature.
• How long: you state the term in the application, and it cannot be less than twelve months.
• How fast: the regulator adds you within twelve hours of receiving the application, and the entry appears in your Gosuslugi account. The list itself is refreshed daily at 12:00 and 24:00 Moscow time, and operators are bound from the refresh.
• What operators must do: refuse your bets and interactive bets, refuse you entry to gambling venues, and close your access to your personal account on their site. The payments centre must stop transferring your money to them.
• Your balance: within five working days, operators must cancel bets on events that have not yet happened and refund those stakes to the bank account named in your application, and pay out winnings on events already settled.

Two features make this harder to undo than most schemes. The application to be added cannot be withdrawn. And a request to be removed can only be sent twelve months after you were entered, through an MFC or Gosuslugi, with a qualified or enhanced electronic signature.

The list is not published online and is not otherwise disclosed; the regulator gives free access only to gambling operators, the payments centre and the supervisory authority.

What it does not reach: unlicensed offshore casinos, which are outside the licensed infrastructure the law binds. Device-level tools cover part of that gap. See blocking apps for iOS and Android.

Blocking gambling payments and sites

The self-exclusion register doubles as a payment block for the legal market: once you are on the list, the single centre that processes bookmaker transfers must not move your money to operators. That is stronger than a bank-level gambling block, but only for licensed operators.

Russian banks do not publish gambling-transaction blocks that customers can switch on, so nothing on the banking side stops payments to unlicensed sites. Those payments are also the ones most likely to route through intermediaries and cryptocurrency, where a card block would not bite anyway.

The practical layer left is your own devices, plus removing saved cards and payment details from any betting apps and browsers before the urge arrives rather than during it. What to do about gambling debt covers the money side.

Free treatment and counselling

Free, non-commercial help for gambling in Russia comes mainly from АНО «Центр борьбы с лудоманией», which works with both people who gamble and relatives, online and at no cost. Most other visible offers are private clinics charging for inpatient programmes.

The self-exclusion law itself contains no route into treatment: it records your refusal to gamble and stops the licensed operators, but does not connect you to a helpline, a psychologist or medical care. Treat the two as separate steps: file the self-ban, then arrange support on your own initiative, because nothing in the process will do it for you.

Support for family and friends

One limit matters more than anything else here: only the person themselves can be entered in the register. Article 5.2 gives the right to the individual, applying in their own name with their own identity document or electronic signature. A spouse or parent has no legal route to add someone, however clear the situation is.

What a relative can do is be present when the person decides to act — the application takes minutes at an MFC or through Gosuslugi — and handle the parts that do not need the gambler's consent: household money, shared cards, and blocking software on shared devices. АНО «Центр борьбы с лудоманией» also works with co-dependent relatives directly.

See how to help someone with a gambling addiction and signs of gambling addiction.

Gambling law and the regulator

Gambling in Russia is confined by geography and by licence. Law 244-FZ creates six gambling zones, on the territories of the Republic of Altai, the Republic of Crimea, Altai Krai, Krasnodar Krai, Primorsky Krai and Kaliningrad Oblast; casinos and slot halls may operate only there.

Article 5, part 3 bans organising gambling in Russia over the internet or other communications networks, with one exception: interactive bets accepted, and winnings paid, by licensed bookmakers and totalisators under article 14.2. Online casinos are therefore illegal, while betting with a licensed bookmaker is not. The law treats the activity as taking place in Russia if the player lives there, pays from a Russian bank or e-money account, uses a Russian network address, or pays from a Russian phone number.

Under article 7, people under 18 cannot be visitors to a gambling venue. The register of people who have opted out is kept by the Единый регулятор азартных игр — the single gambling regulator, a public-law company to which the licensed bookmakers are connected.