I think, it's a purely economical thing. Most large businesses in Russia are owned by people affiliated in one or other way with the current leadership (Vladimi

I think, it's a purely economical thing. Most large businesses in Russia are owned by people affiliated in one or other way with the current leadership (Vladimir Putin and friends). This has been gradually achieved by "raiding" independent Russian companies - making their business model unviable by selectively applying laws or threatening to jail original owners, and then buying them for a fraction of the cost. Now that they have deployed and tested the infrastructure to block arbitrary Internet traffic (that started a few years ago under a guise of combating pedophilia), they will use it to transfer the market share from companies not owned by the "group of friends" to their Russian equivalents. In other words, they want Google to exit the Russian market, because its market share will then go to Yandex and Mail.ru, owned by the "right" people. And if Google doesn't do it voluntarily, they will just block it like they blocked LinkedIn [0]. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38014501 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38014501