[pas]

And ... who knows, maybe Putin really won maybe not. After all he systematically crushes any real opposition.

The problem in Russia, the problem in all of these questions is the huge imbalance of power. Russia an Belarus is an autocracy. (Yes, it's again context, but using the word context is uselessly too broad, doesn't have explanatory power.)

So Trump claims they are persecuted, we can look at the balance of power. Oh, he's the sitting president. Well, then it's very-very-very unlikely that he's silenced, and it's more likely that he's trying to overextend his power, and he's simply facing pushback from various other social/democratic/other institutions.

When Twitter banned the SciHub account because it broke their Counterfeit policy people noted that in this case it was likely Twitter using its power too much to please Elsevier/India.