[FpUser]

"So in line with that they're simultaneously crafting the beginnings of Russia's version of the Chinese firewall"

What they actually doing is making sure that their internal internet based infrastructure does not depend on what POTUS de jour feel like. Russia once had been threatened to be cut off from the Visa and other financial services and that had led them to create their own payment system. After the lesson like this one has to be the ultimate fool to leave one of the most important infrastructure to be controlled by foreign entities.

Trying to spin it as Russia vs democracy is just a propaganda on it's own.

[geoka9]

The independence of infrastructure is the stated goal. But I doubt it's the main one. They've been trying to shut down opposition political commentary[0] by forcing them to move outside of the .ru domain. The next step is to limit the access to non-ru TLDs since they can't control those.

[0] For example, grani.ru had to move to graniru.org several years ago, which was then blocked by most ISPs in Russia due to a government order:

https://grani-ru-org.appspot.com/wiki/Blocked/

[FpUser]

I am not here to claim that Russia is all nice and fluffy. But their stated goal for making infrastructure independent from the West is totally legit. It makes 100% sense. The rest is all guesses and speculations.