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It makes it a lot easier for the Russian gov to sell "control over the internet" to the public.

Yes, and this. It’s a lot easier to sell the idea of defence against a common enemy when the enemy is actually real.

The same way that it helps prevent them in a corporate environment. I work for a security company and control over ingress and egress is absolutely a fundamental part of our network security.

Same as having a centralised firewall on a corporate ISP, having a firewall on a country level can prevent / monitor traffic to whole segments of IT infrastructure.

It's more of a back up system (for now?) than anything, so when things go south for them they can rely on something else. Just like gps has many alternatives by other super powers, so when American military decided to turn it off, things would still work.