[breck]

I have no idea what Russia's interests are. I'm just genuinely curious and in the dark. I've never been to the country and grew up in the West during the Cold War, so when I think of Russia I was indoctrinated to think of "the bad guys".

The country is an enigma to me—very good at math but from what I read a corrupt place with rule by power and not law. So yeah, I'm just genuinely asking, how are they the ones doing these things which make the world a better place, and why isn't it us leading the charge in these 3 issues? Maybe it is just a coincidence that those 3 things align with their selfish interests, and their is no altruism involved? Or maybe there's a group in Russia that loves the ideals of the USA, and is able to actually help implement those ideals from there, because if you tried to do those 3 things from here you would be thrown in prison due to some bad laws/people here?

[marcosdumay]

Hum... Most of it seems sarcastic, but a simple antagonistic view towards the US explains a lot:

> protecting a whistleblower against government overreach

Becomes protecting an enemy of their enemy, and one that commands a high press influence.

> pointing out how fundamentally insecure closed source, proprietary software

Becomes just exploiting the enemy infrastructure.

The one thing that I'm not comfortable with a simple explanation of "the Russian government doesn't like the US" is their support of SciHub. It can explain the support quite well, but it is not the only simple explanation available, so there may be other reasons.