Why is that? We're not saying it's definitely Russia, but exploring the possibility they could be behind this.

After the multiple sabotages, killings, corruption, as well as the invasion of a neighbor country, we have some reasons to think Russia is a bad state actor.

yes, invasion, occupation, colonization, genocide, massacre of civilians, killing of women and children, killing of doctors and nurses, killing of journalists, killing of UN personnel, totally a barbaric country, a bad state actor,

We feel similar when watching this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0unhxkWkiKY

Good place as any to ask: do you need a VPN to access the “Western” internet? Is the block on the Russian side, or are Western websites blocking Russian IPs?

The block is on the Russian side (in most cases), but not all Western sites are blocked (Hacker News is working). Most of Russians know how to use VPNs, though it is extremely inconvenient.

No in most cases. Meta products are banned, twitter, discord and youtube (this one mostly works in reality), but pretty much everything else is unaffected.

Some Western side companies banned Russia by IP's like Intel, but in general, my list of websites to tunnel through a VPN is rather short, like a dozen and mostly to unblock youtube as meta and twitter are cancer anyway.

Why?

not all people in west are that ignorant, atleast half of european public wants putin gone.

(other half is just living life not really caring about putin.)

I understand, but unfortunately, I don’t see any claims that are false.