dijit, what is you position on this?
I believe the british government would try to get away with much more if it was in russias position. But that's my feeling and it's not founded in any facts.
But that is tied Russia's international history. When you need to be united against dangerous enemies, you need a strong-man ruler to suppress disagreement. And, going the other way, if domestic rule is having unpopular results like damaging the economy, then one way to get support is to tell the public the country is danger from abroad. So a paranoid view of the external world and an oppressive government are mutually reinforcing, and the Russian people, alas, have never known any other pattern.
And it is an official law, not some kind of recommendations or special cases or limited measures. "We don't like your site, we block it for good" - that's the law.
I don't see Russia being different in this regard, we just don't understand them and we understand the British.