He's also concerned that the US government and their assets will use this to undermine the country that he is charged with defending. Which isn't really irrational, because many anonymity tools have been funded by the US government for exactly this reason.

It's not a reasonable tradeoff and I disagree with him, but one can easily see why someone in his position would be concerned about this for reasons other than attempting to secure a dictatorship.

The fact is the US government has a well documented history of undermining elections, and then funding rebellion and civil wars if the election doesn't turn out how they hoped. When leaders attempt to shut down mediums used for propaganda/psyops/adversary coordination, they get to play the fascist dictator card against them, which is pretty convenient.

Putin is up for reelection spring '18. With all of the symmetric responses going on between the US and Russia at the moment (tit for tat game), one can only expect shenanigans.

For the brevity: "the law, already approved by the Duma, the lower house of parliament" so it is a collective decision of Russian lawmakers.

Meh, their collective decision is to follow Putin's orders. Gosduma's sessions are streamed online but they still don't give a fuck and play games on smartphones, read newspapers, chat and even don't show up at all so others have to vote for them[1]. No wonder most those draconian laws are passed with 90%+ approval.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Usmji_xRe0U

The Duma are just Putin yes men and women.

I haven't heard of any instance where the Duma disagreed with any of Putin's ideas. I don't think the Duma is providing any checks and balances to the power that Putin has.