wow, I would have thought those dudes would have moved to a more friendly country years ago given the fame and profits from creating nginx.
So in that respect it isn't that impressive that he stayed in Russia even when (mostly non-state) news became more and more disturbing. Probably even less so if you assume a line of reasoning that nobody would bother with relatively small foreign company built around open-source product, a company that's already sold to larger foreign company (conveniently forgetting about the price that F5 paid for that company).
(edit: s/american-registered/foreign/: Nginx Inc. was registered in British Virgin Islands)