> The first part just seems like a forced MITM situation whilst the second makes some sense - in a cyber warfare scenario; however, that runs under the assumpti

> The first part just seems like a forced MITM situation whilst the second makes some sense - in a cyber warfare scenario; however, that runs under the assumption that the DNS servers and/or entries didn't get poisoned before they're "cut-off" from foreign infrastructure. Not only that, you don't need a separate DNS for this. Presumably the .ru TLD is already controlled by Russia. All they would need is to operate their own root server, which wouldn't even need to return invalid data for other TLDs, just not return invalid data for the .ru TLD.