[homhomhom]

It is definitely R&D to find a vulnerability in TOR or lack thereof, it's just that BBC as usual is arbitrarily choosing what to report and what to stay silent about.

Look no further than the tender page: http://zakupki.gov.ru/epz/order/notice/zkk44/view/common-inf...

Here they explicitly state that it's a tender for 'Выполнение научно-исследовательской работы, шифр «ТОР (Флот)»' (Research and Development works, code "TOR (Navy)")

Then it's a closed tender (stated in the same document), meaning that they come up with a list of organisations they invite to participate in this tender. No organization they did not invite can participate.

So you see this is nothing like a bounty.

>it seems like researchers have to pay to enter

I wager they are required by law to demand some sum of money, maybe this sum is determined as a function of a tender value; I don't believe there is some additional meaning to asking people to pay 5500 usd to participate in a closed tender.